


... And All The World's a Stage

by thinkatory



Category: Good Omens - Neil Gaiman & Terry Pratchett, Supernatural
Genre: Backstory, Badass Bookworm, Castiel is a Kitten, Celestial Innuendo, Character Development, Crossover, F/M, Gen, Gen Fic, Kickass Angels, Little Black Dress, M/M, Noble Demon, Slash
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2011-01-01
Updated: 2011-11-04
Packaged: 2017-10-25 17:21:06
Rating: Mature
Warnings: Graphic Depictions Of Violence, Major Character Death
Chapters: 4
Words: 38,745
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/272838
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/thinkatory/pseuds/thinkatory
Summary: <blockquote class="userstuff">
              <p>1987 to 2011; how Crowley survived the aftermath of the Adam Young incident and rose to prominence beside Lilith. <i>Crowley's lasted a long time being what he is -- a better class of demon, if there is such a thing -- by not letting Hell get to him. By tempting and not being tempted, by standing on neutral ground, by just doing his job.</i> Spoilers up to SPN 7x02 "Hello, Cruel World" in the epilogue.</p>
            </blockquote>





	1. Chapter 1

**Author's Note:**

> I accidentally deleted this fic while trying to get rid of a draft, soooo I hope those of you who enjoyed this find it again. *FACEPALM* Now with an epilogue!

_Crowley gave him a sideways look._

 _"Your people been in touch?" he said._

 _"No. Yours?"_

 _"No."_

 _"I think they're pretending it didn't happen."_

 _"Mine too, I suppose. That's bureaucracy for you."_

 _"And I think mine are waiting to see what happens next," said Aziraphale._

 _Crowley nodded. "A breathing space," he said. "A chance to morally re-arm. Get the defenses up. Ready for the big one."_

 _They stood by the pond, watching the ducks scrabble for the bread._

 _"Sorry?" said Aziraphale. "I thought that **was** the big one."_

 _"I'm not sure," said Crowley. "Think about it. For my money, the really big one will be all of Us against all of Them."_

 _"What? You mean Heaven and Hell against humanity?"_   
[1]

This would be an appropriate time to note that Crowley hates it when he turns out to be right, usually because it means that something very bad is heading straight towards him.

* * *

 _1987_

 

It takes Hell a week to get its act together and finally pull Crowley back into the Pit. By then they find him alone at his flat, with his houseplants and a new car[2], because Aziraphale had been dragged back to Heaven three days previous. He is the epitome of "resigned to his fate," because Hell is pretty blessed infamous for not forgiving and _definitely_ not forgetting.

The two demons set him down outside of the Malebolge, and Crowley appraises his life so far as they stare him down. All things considered, he had a pretty good run.

Beelzebub stalks out of the Malebolge, dismisses the demons with a wave of his hand, and Crowley's newfound optimism vanishes at seeing the look on his face. He's just a little too pleased with himself. It doesn't bode well. "It izz good to see you, Crowley."

It's worse than smugness. He's _cheerful_. A good mood on Hell's ranking officers has never meant anything good for Crowley. He tries a smile, gingerly. "Good to be back home," he returns.

"Oh yezz, you have quite a future ahead of you." Beelzebub gestures casually, apparently calling Alistair forward from the shadows. "We will have zzo much _fun_."

Out of nowhere, he decides that the thing he's going to miss the most are the sunglasses.[3] "Yes, I'm sure," he says, deciding to go down upbeat if nothing else.

Alistair flicks out his razor in the same way anyone else would take out a ballpoint. "About time you got here. I've had some time to think, and I've come up with some really good ones _just_ for you, Crowley."

"Well, I have to say I've always admired your craftsmanship," Crowley says to Alistair.[4]

Beelzebub turns to Alistair, gestures grandly to Crowley as though offering a gift. "He izz yourzz."

It's at this point that Crowley starts looking for an exit in earnest, which turns out to be pointless, because there’s someone standing in front of the only door.

"Now, now, what's going on here?"

Even Beelzebub, Hell's most order-obsessed bureaucrat, seems surprised at Azazel's arrival. "I did not exzzpect you to accept my _invitation_ for the entertainment, Azazel."

"But it should be worth a watch," Alistair cuts in with a smirk, and continues to lovingly sharpen his razor.

Azazel's yellow eyes flick from demon to demon, seemingly unimpressed with everyone there, which is really something considering he's dealing with the VIP of the Malebolge. "Yeah, about that. Why?" he asks.

The scrape of Alistair's razor stops at that. Crowley chances a look around and both Beelzebub and Alistair seem as surprised as he is that _anyone_ needs an explanation for why he needs a good torturing. "Becauzze it is due to hizz failure that Our Father is still imprisoned!" Beelzebub points out.

Azazel shrugs at that. "It was a stupid idea anyway," he says, and glances behind him. "Don't you think so, sweetheart?"

"I told you not to call me that, Azazel."

No blessed way. But she's _right there_ and Crowley is glad he's meatsuit-free because otherwise he might have just shit his pants.

"Lilith," Alistair says reverently.[5]

Lilith ignores him, and turns her milky-white gaze on Crowley to appraise him. She abruptly turns to Beelzebub. "Let him go."

Beelzebub glances at Crowley, obviously trying to think fast. "My Lady -- "

She smiles. Her smile is the worst thing Crowley's ever seen. "Did you really think you could free Our Father without my help?" she asks Beelzebub.

Beelzebub looks as scared as Crowley is and now Crowley's actually starting to enjoy this. "My Lady, we had no choice. Until now you were trapped so deep -- "

Lilith rolls her eyes in nothing short of outright boredom, waves a hand at Beelzebub and Alistair, and they vanish.

"I thought they'd never leave," Azazel says.

Crowley thinks for a moment that there must have been some sort of mistake, as he is _most definitely_ in the wrong company. He wishes he hadn't thought that because the second it flickers across his mind, Lilith is looking at him again.

"It wouldn't have worked," she says delicately, continuing the conversation.

Azazel shrugs. "It could've worked."

" _No_ ," Lilith says, a quick glare stopping Azazel from going on. "He needs me. My love needs _me_ to free him. No Antichrist, no cambion; only me."

Azazel sends Crowley a long-suffering look, which is so unbelievably insane of him to have done around _Lilith_ that Crowley isn't quite sure that he got it right until he goes on. "Of course, sweetheart. My Lady," he amends, when Lilith sends him a withering look.

Crowley is really starting to wonder if he's supposed to be there. "Sorry," he says, already sure he's going to regret this, "but any chance of either of you letting me out of here? I have reservations at half past seven, is the thing --”

Lilith pins him to the wall without a gesture, just a look, and walks towards him. "Crowley," she pronounces, touches his face -- his _real_ face. "Did you betray us?"

There's only one thing to say to that. "Me? No, I did no such thing. Working in your interests all along. Knew it wouldn't work out."

"It could've worked," Azazel repeats again, with emphasis, and glances away from Lilith, shrugs her off. "It was supposed to happen _in America_. We lost control of the situation. That's _your_ fault, Crowley."

"Yes, well -- " Crowley says quickly, mind scrambling for a good answer to that.

"There's only _one_ plan that matters," Lilith interrupts, her fingers stroking under Crowley's chin. He's trying to think of better last words than _Yes, well_. "And _it is written_."

Azazel leans against the wall that Lilith's pinned Crowley against with a single touch. "Let's get to the point. You," he says, pointing at Crowley, "held the angel off. You gave Our Father time to break through. And even though the Antichrist decided to change our plans, the tremors through Hell set our _lovely_ Lady free. Now we're finally in a position to get to it."

Crowley feels very much like he's on the wrong side in a James Bond film. "Sorry?" he says. "Get to what?"

"The End of the World as you know it, of course," Lilith says, syrupy-sweet and far too pleased with herself. She forces him to look her in the face. "And I have work for you."

"Oh, good. Been looking for a new market," Crowley babbles.

She pats his cheek. "But you're mine now. You have to do whatever I say, or I'll give you back to Alistair. Deal?"

He doesn't let himself think twice about that one. "Only fair," he says, nodding.

Azazel looks as though he would laugh if Lilith wasn't just feet away. "Welcome to Sales, kid."

Now that sinks in -- _Sales_ \-- and Lilith presses a kiss to Crowley's cheek. "You'll do just fine," she coos. "I can _tell_."

You don't argue with Lilith, so he just nods again. Lucky for him, the first five minutes of terror are the worst part.[6]

* * *

 _Still 1987_

 

Upside: Crowley is alive and topside.

Downside: He's in America.

It's not that he minds the States, exactly; it's just that old habits die hard and he rather likes tea, football[7], the food, the complete lack of sun[8], and the iron fist of bureaucracy. It all reminds him very much of home, with the added fun of materialism to boot, but when Lilith tells you to do something, you do it, so the States it is.

Of course, rather than just the occasional deal and overall malingering, he's now a crossroads demon by trade. It's all very inconvenient, it turns out -- whenever the customer feels like throwing their soul into the Pit for something that is likely not worth the cost? No matter what hour, Crowley must, of course, be there.

Add in that Lilith is a very... _aggressive_ sales manager, and it all comes off as very _Glengarry Glen Ross_.

He likes to drive. He has to learn to drive on the opposite side of the road (these madmen, Americans, changing every rule they can think of), but that's worth it for the peace of mind the occasional drive gives him -- the illusion that he could flee.

It never strikes him that this is actually a brilliant idea, until midway through an idle drive through LA traffic, Aziraphale appears in his passenger seat.

"Oh dear," he says, fussing with his coat. "I never did get the hang of this sort of thing."

Crowley glances over just to be certain it's actually him and not someone masquerading as him, but even with the new vessel, there's no mistaking the angel. "The Powers That Be haven't clipped your wings, I see. I thought they might have done."

Aziraphale seems unnerved, but Crowley can't blame him. If Heaven is even remotely as vigilant as Hell, they've both been under a lot of pressure. "I must say I was surprised to hear news of you on Earth," the angel says. "I'd supposed you'd be undergoing some terrible fate in the depths of Hell for some time."

"I have friends in low places," Crowley dismisses. It's easy to lie with sunglasses on, and even more so when there's a likelihood of someone listening in.

"Back to the usual, then?" Aziraphale prompts, still very stiff-backed in the comfortable seat. "Temptation? Moral degradation?"

Crowley figures the truth isn't enough to get him into trouble in this case. "Sales, actually. Deals."

"Ah." Crowley knows that tone. That tone is definitely disapproval. "I'm not sure I see a difference."

"It's _free will_ , angel." He sends Aziraphale a look over his sunglasses. "They initiate. We give them what they want."

Aziraphale concedes the point with a nod. "Naturally. I do recall, though, you once telling me that much of the evil on Earth is instigated by humanity itself, and not by Hell's legions? By no means am I saying I agree with this, but you do recall saying that, or the like," he adds hastily.

An angel is fact-checking him. This is a little irritating, especially as it's not likely this is going to lead to anything complimentary. "Couldn't say it better myself. And?"

"These 'deals' are just an appeal to human greed. Of course it's an individual human's choice to sell his or her soul for some sort of gain, but it's not something that they could do without Hell's intervention," Aziraphale points out.

"Yes, obviously," Crowley says, putting on his best bored tone. "I'm sorry, I seem to have missed the point."

He doesn't even have to look at Aziraphale to know the expression he's wearing -- this sort of chiding, disappointed look most often seen on schoolteachers' faces when giving a talking-to to promising students. "Just doing your job, as always," the angel says. "You were always very good at it."

Crowley could tell the truth, but he likes being where he is as opposed to where he should be, and besides, he reminds himself, he's _just an angel_.[9] "The times, they are a-changing," he says, not without irony.

"Yes," Aziraphale says stiffly. "I can tell."

Crowley looks over to give the angel a nonchalant look of disbelief, but he's already left the car. With a sigh, he reaches for the tapes and stuffs one into the tape deck without bothering to look at it.

"Biiiiicycle! Biiiiicycle!" Freddie Mercury croons through the speakers, not at all to his surprise.

He leaves it on. He's growing fond of Queen.

Things really are changing.[10]

* * *

 _1998_

 

Crowley's priority has as always been to stay out of Hell and survive the process, so he keeps looking, but there's no obvious way to get out of Lilith's clutches. He has no choice; he settles in, to pass as one of them and observe and learn what Hell's worst are really up to.

After all, he knows a lot about this Apocalypse stuff, having essentially been in the eye of the storm for the first try at it. Even so, he's having a difficult time placing Lilith's part in the grand scheme. All she seems to be doing is making a lot of deals. He starts wondering if she's trying to fill the Pit with souls that'll make good demons, but no. There are already a lot of bastards in Hell.

He’s positive there's an endgame here, but he doesn't see it.

Five years in, Lilith starts dropping in more and more to see him. She gives him _holidays_ , tells him to delegate to the others, and suddenly he's got responsibility. The whole idea puts him off a little, because it starts to sound like a promotion, but all it turns out to mean is that he gets to check out the pretty little girls his fellow sales demons are wearing before they head out the door.

By that time a decade's passed since he last saw Aziraphale[11], he's only making deals with _very_ important people, and Lilith wanders into his house like she owns it.

If Crowley were to be totally honest, which he rarely is, he is not sure what to think. For centuries on end his life hasn't changed much at all, but it's been ten years (practically the blink of a demon's eye, in the scheme of things) and _everything_ has managed to change.

He's becoming fond of scotch. It helps him relax.

It's a scorching summer night in the middle of July and the phrase "hot as Hell" is definitely not applicable, but if it climbs another ten degrees he might let poetic license take over just this once. He blasts the air conditioning and rests comfortably in his lush living room watching television, bored out of his mind.

He's thinking about taking a drive and goes to finish his drink, and that's when Lilith takes a seat on the couch beside him, all blonde and legs and the most evil thing walking the earth.

"I thought you might show up," he says, and sets down his glass.[12]

She takes it for the compliment it's supposed to sound like. "Oh, Crowley," she murmurs. Her fingernails course into his hair, and for a split-second, he lets himself almost enjoy it. "Did you miss me?"

She's been gone for months, making deal after deal while he stays back here handling contracts written in something much worse than blood. He hasn't missed the way his skin (his _real_ skin) crawls when she's always so blessed close, but there's something about her voice. Her _voice_. Like she learned something from Lucifer when he twisted her into _this_.

Crowley isn't looking at her. He's lasted a long time being what he is -- a better class of demon, if there is such a thing -- by not letting Hell get to him. By tempting and not being tempted, by standing on neutral ground, by _just doing his job_.

The voice of alarm in his head sounds like Aziraphale. He stops, draws back from Lilith's breath against his cheek, and she looks up at him from under her eyelashes, her white eyes cloudy, gaze sharp. "Crowley?"

There's an old refrain playing in his head. He has no choice but to be evil. He is evil. He's a _demon_.

For some reason that doesn't seem to be enough to convince him that what he's thinking this time isn't very, very bad. "What have you been up to, then?" he asks her, lazily sipping at his scotch.

"You know." Lilith stretches out, rests against his side, still casually touching him. He remembers her touching his face back when she and Azazel freed him, the terror she stoked in him without even trying, but now she's just a fact of life -- a terrifying one, but nevertheless. " _Deals_."

"Yes, I know that much, I handled the paperwork, didn't I?" Aziraphale was right about one thing. His hands feel irreparably dirty every time he passes along another contract. _This is what you were created to do._ Even so. "Did you have _fun_?"

She reflects on that. "I picked one myself. A girl," she says after a moment. "She wanted her parents dead because her daddy was a very bad man. Ten years, for that -- that's real potential, don't you think? She'll be one of my _best_ , Crowley."

He tries to not think too hard about what happens when the deals are up. "No doubt," he says, non-committal. "You do have an eye for that sort of thing."

She nods, and draws his face down to hers. "I picked you, didn't I?"

He doesn't reply, because there's nothing he can say to that. He's trying to remind himself that she was once _human_ and chose to become this. That she's the absolute prime fucking example of what he finds so horrifying about the free will that Aziraphale seems to so admire in them. He's trying to remind himself that she chose to be this way, like the greedy bastards he capitalizes on, but even he isn't immune to her.

It's really remarkable that Crowley managed to hold out this long, he has to admit. There are whole myths built around the fact that men want to fuck Lilith, at their own risk.

"I think," Lilith muses, in front of him, all repulsive and alluring, "that you may be my _favorite_."[13]

As might be obvious by now, Crowley's favorite sin is pride. Pride made him keep his Bentley in one piece as it burned, it made him defend the world that he'd become so very good at twisting to Hell's will, it made him become a different sort of demon than he started as just so he could keep on living, proud and a complete and utter bastard.

And pride, it turns out, is what makes him finally fall.

It moves him, pushes him forward just enough to kiss her. She's been waiting for years, more than ready. The sick part is that this isn't Lilith's charms, this isn't a ploy, a cover for him, he really, really wants this, and his skin is still crawling at how wrong it is (how wrong _she_ is) even when her skirt is hiked up around her hips and he can't stop himself.

And then, when she's wrapped around him like a bloody serpent, he lets go completely. Even though she forces him down like he's nothing, though she could rip him into fleshy little pieces as soon as look at him, somehow, _that's the best part_. The danger, the pain, the blood, the filth, the _nothing_ in her eyes, her kiss, her murmured words; logic says this shouldn't be the best fuck of his life, but it is. No question.

After, Lilith and Crowley lounge on the floor of his living room for some time, comfortably naked in more ways than one; he smokes a cigarette and indulges in listening to her draw out sweet words in that voice of hers, watching her pose at him, and taking part in the two-demon show she's putting on for him.

Funny thing, he thinks, she's the best salesman Hell's got.[14] Then again, she learned from the best.

"I don't know how we could do it without you, Crowley," she says, resting her forehead against his.

"You said it yourself. The deals make themselves," he reminds her.

Lilith tilts her head. "Not these deals."

He raises his eyebrows at her, curious as to what the blessed host that actually means, but just a single look into her eyes, really, reminds him who he's talking to. "I do what I can," he says, false modesty at best.

Much to both their surprise, the phone rings. There's reason to be surprised; the phone hasn't rung in ten years.[15]

She gives him a reproachful look as he goes to stand and fetches his trousers. "It could be business," he tells her.

"It probably isn't," she says, but doesn't move.

He pulls on his trousers and answers the phone. "Yes, what?" he says wearily.

"Why exactly have you put Enochian warding all over your property? Do you know how much trouble I had to go through to find this phone number?" Aziraphale demands. "You've changed it. _Twice_."

The really surprising thing is Aziraphale is _demanding_. Then, of course, he realizes that he has Aziraphale on the phone with him after ten years of metaphorical radio silence. Crowley looks at Lilith, still naked on his living room carpet, and then says into the phone, "I'm afraid I can't help you with that."

"Wait," Aziraphale says quickly, before he can even think about hanging up, "please just WAIT."

This is not going to turn out well. "What do you want?"

"Be at the Ritz tomorrow at 5."

"I think you have the wrong number," Crowley says, and hangs up on him.

Lilith releases a light sigh. "You left me for that?"

Oh, he needs a scotch. "So sorry," he says, barely sincere. Before he can think of something else to say to ward her off, she's rising to her feet, approaching him with a smirk, and with a single touch he's in over his head all over again, worse than before.

* * *

 _Still 1998 (the next day, actually)_

 

It takes some effort, but Crowley manages to slither out of Lilith's grasp and get to England again. He hasn't realized how much he's missed it, and it hasn't changed much, but that's really no surprise. The Ritz is still the Ritz, and the English are still very much the English.

Aziraphale, though, is markedly different, he can tell that just by a glance at him as he approaches the table. Crowley supposes he'd be one to talk, wouldn't he, and leaves it alone. "This had better be good. You have no idea what sort of risk I'm taking for this lark," he says to the angel before he even takes a seat. "We don't all get to flit around on a wing and a prayer."

"I would very much like to carry on like this, for old times' sake, but I'm in much the same position, I'm afraid," Aziraphale says, pulling his chair closer to the table. He's stiff and nervous and curt in this way that reminds him of, oh, all the other angels Crowley's met, which shouldn't be unnerving, but it is. "Let's get on with it, shall we?"

"Of course," Crowley says, and lounges back in his chair. "I'm sorry about the Enochian warding, I have to say I wasn't expecting any visits from a friendly angel."

Aziraphale just looks at him for a moment as though he's said something completely idiotic, and that's when Crowley knows for sure that something has _definitely_ changed Up There. "There were Revelation signs in Nebraska recently. You wouldn't happen to know anything about that?"

Ah. He doesn't have a good answer for that. "No," he says honestly.

There's a look in Aziraphale's eye like he really wants to say something else, but he's sticking to some sort of script. Arguably, they both are. "Are you sure?"

"Of course I'm _sure_ ," Crowley retorts, and turns to the approaching waiter to evenly snap, "We're not ready to order yet. Now do you mind clearing out?"

Aziraphale doesn't look away from Crowley, and the strangest part about that is that Crowley finds himself waiting for the angel to chide him, or even tell him off, for being a bastard. Instead he says, "We know that Lilith's free."

"Yes, well-spotted," Crowley says, and is once again very grateful for his sunglasses. "What about her?"

"We don't have much time, you could be a bit more cooperative," Aziraphale says, a touch severely.

"If she's up to something, she hasn't bothered to tell me about it." The really terrible part is that's the _truth_. Lilith and Azazel might be up to something, but he has no specific details, only hints. Even that's not safe to say aloud; it's never a good idea to underestimate the reach of either demon, from the depths of Hell to agents scattered across the planet.

"Crowley," Aziraphale says in a sort of strained whisper, tightly, urgently. "We had an agreement."

"An arrangement," Crowley corrects. Aziraphale's expression changes, just barely, but he keeps going. "And things have _changed_ , angel."

"I suppose they have. That's all," Aziraphale says abruptly, and stands. "Goodbye, Crowley."

Aziraphale vanishes and Crowley doesn't get the chance to return the sentiment, _again_ , not that he even has the slightest clue what to say. No one notices that his dinner partner has disappeared into thin air, and that, Crowley supposes, is the least of the denials occurring at the Ritz tonight.

He drinks until he has the courage to go home and pretend that none of this happened.

* * *

 _Late 2006_

 

Crowley finds the twenty-first century laughably bleak. In the past, humanity had found refuge from their troubles[16], but if there's ever been proof that things are headed downwards -- maybe literally -- this century is it.

Admittedly, much of it is the fault of Crowley and his lovely sales team. His job has always been to make humanity more likely to land in Hell's clutches, and from the looks of it, he's apparently very, very good at it. They're practically queueing up to step into the Pit.

He chooses to laugh at the fact because the other option is just too terrible to think on for long.

It's not easy for Crowley to get really, truly drunk, but he can do it if he tries. Lilith is the very definition of languorous, stretched out comfortably on the bed beside him. It's only when he sets down his glass and looks over at her that he sees blood on the sheets, and realizes that the night's entertainment must have gotten a bit out of hand.

"Is that you, pet?" he asks lightly.

She sends him an questioning look, and he nods to the streaks of blood on the sheets between them. She sighs, rolls onto her stomach and considers her bloody fingernails. "Me again," she says, and claps her hands together like a pleased little girl, hardly apologetic.

"Ah." As Lilith idly licks his blood from her perfectly manicured fingernails, Crowley slouches forward with a grunt, because that explains the pinch in his shoulder; she's managed to seriously claw him up again. This is life as Lilith's concubine. "I'll be back in a moment -- "

He's just sat up when he feels her power grasp around him, pull him back, and he doesn't resist, involuntarily shuddering as she yanks him closer by his bleeding shoulder. "No need to be so _prim_ , Crowley. By now I think I know how you like me."

Lilith, the first demon, she drinks the blood of children, she tortures, maims and murders for a giggle, and she makes Crowley hate himself for loving her -- of everything and everyone here, Above, and Below, he loves _her_.

They kiss once and then again, his blood still on her lips and her nails sharp against his lower back. There was once a spark of something good in him, but he couldn't find it now if you dared him. He's not sure he would want to.

"Oh, you crazy kids," Azazel says from the doorway, and puts his hands up. "Take your time, I'll be watching Oprah."

Crowley could almost keep it up in Azazel's presence, but the mention of Oprah ends it.[17] He heaves a sigh and moves to his side of the bed, shrugging off an annoyed look from Lilith as she sits up. "What is it?" she demands.

The surprising thing: once he shows his face, it's quickly obvious that Azazel isn't in a good mood. December approaches, but the arrogant glow of the events of the summer -- the end of the smug campaign of John Winchester by, rather appropriately, a _deal_ \-- lasted for the bastard quite a while.

Crowley clears the alcohol out of his system. He'll want to be sober for this one.

Azazel's looking at him. "He needs to go," he says frankly to Lilith.

"Some trousers and I'll be on my way," Crowley concurs, moving to leave the bed, but Lilith grips his wrist.

"No," she says evenly -- it echoes with power. He could move, but he really doesn't want to. Azazel is just staring at her. " _Talk_."

Azazel wears a sour look, which just doesn't look right on his face at all, and Crowley's bored of the whole thing already, so he cuts in. "Unless you're here to deliver John the Baptist's head on a plate, I could really not be bothered to care, so carry on."

There's a pause where he can feel Lilith smiling next to him, and Azazel just says, "I have no idea what you see in him." Crowley supposes flat-out mockery is better than the acerbic bit he'd been trying (those are his lines, after all). Then Azazel's lip curls, and his face darkens as he catches Lilith's gaze. "He isn't breaking."

Playtime is over. Lilith shakes her head, her bloodstained fingers gripping, staining the sheets. "He _has_ to," she retorts.

"He _isn't_ ," Azazel snaps off.

The air of the room starts to simmer with the first taste of her real anger, and Crowley is starting to wonder why he chose to stay. "Lilith," he starts, just barely.

She ignores him. " _It is written_ ," she spits at Azazel. "If he won't break, then _someone else_ will."

"Sister, you've been saying that for years, you're just looking for the perfect candidate before you start our campaign. Yeah, well, I found him, and _he's not breaking_ ," Azazel pronounces.

 _Candidate._ Crowley knows his corporate buzzwords, and this one's been out in the ether for a few years now. He lights up a cigarette and shrugs when Azazel looks at him, taking a drag before he speaks. "There's a sucker born every minute, didn't you know?" he says.

"This is a grown-up situation, Crowley. Stay out of it," Azazel advises, and opens his mouth to go on. Crowley takes the opportunity to interrupt, perhaps unwisely, but he's just that kind of bastard.

"It sounds to me like you're looking for a particular sort of man for... a very important job," he says delicately. "Let me tell you that if, in fact, there is a sucker born every minute, it means that there's a really unfortunate amount of them out there, and any number of particular suckers just waiting for you to take advantage of them. And all they'll need is the right pitch."

Crowley wonders if he's just let his mouth get him in serious trouble, but then Lilith's hand is on his shoulder and she says, her voice pitched just perfectly to make Azazel stand up straight: "The deals sell themselves."

"Yeah, right." Azazel's yellow-eyed glare is set, his teeth on edge in this way that makes Crowley much less hesitant to really, really _like_ the cold, evil bitch curled up against his side. "I'll keep you posted."

Lilith smiles, wide, all teeth and half-laughing as she retorts. "We'll just see who gets there first, won't we?"

For a second, Azazel stares at the two of them, and Crowley imagines he's jealous. Why shouldn't he be? "Of course, _my Lady_ ," Azazel says, just barely avoiding _scathing_ in his tone, and leaves.

Once they're definitely alone, Crowley glances over at her casually, as though he planned that whole thing. "There's a reason I have them out searching for the best of the best," he says, "isn't there?"

Lilith's mouth is on him, her teeth grazing his neck, and his grip on the conversation loosens. "There's a reason for _everything_ , Crowley," she murmurs.

He nudges her away with his shoulder, and she looks at him, curiously appalled. He leans in to kiss her again, hard, roughly handling her to get her pinned underneath him, to get her close attention before he says it.

" _Tell me everything_."

She doesn't. But he knows her now, the way that she lies, and he learns enough. Now he understands.

* * *

 _Spring 2007_

 

It isn't supposed to be like this, when you're all but immortal, when you've lived for millennia. When you've managed to go from being Hell's most wanted to Lilith's right hand in just twenty years, it means that you probably should've at least suspected that the bitch would wind herself around everything in your life and leave no escape.

He's supposed to be smarter than this. He _is_ smarter than this.

It's been twenty years since Crowley's really experienced despair. In the scheme of things that isn't a long time, but he still wishes he couldn't taste it in the back of his throat, like the greasy sizzle of Hell. It reminds him where he came from -- despite millions of commendations for turning human souls over to management and all of the power he wields now, he's just another scaly bastard trying to claw his way out of the Pit by any means necessary.[18]

Everything changes after she murmurs half-truths against his skin, preaches to him with the fervor of the faithful, and for the first time in his very long life there are more reasons to stay in a very dangerous situation than there are to run.

 _Once He's back, He'll put it right. We'll finally get the world we were meant to have, she said. The world we deserve._

It's completely absurd but his hand fumbles on the top of the bottle of scotch when he thinks of Lucifer, in fear but also in jealousy, and that's when he knows it's all gone entirely wrong.

He'd made the mistake of listening to her, of thinking he could set her agenda forward without ever knowing the specifics. He'd sent his girls out to find the best, most desperate souls they could find, challenged them to get them to Hell in five years or less, and dismissed their bitching. All because of a snatch of conversation. _All we need is a righteous man,_ she'd said.

Idiot. He's an idiot.

It isn't about morality. It's the seed of Seth. The lot's always been angel-suit fodder, and Heaven's always gone out of its way to ensure the line won't die off. It figures that John Winchester, who shrugs off Alistair's blade like it's nothing, is literally made of tougher stuff.

There's only one reason that a son of Seth would sit on Alistair's rack this long. It's not about a challenge or even about Azazel's grudge. It's about breaking him, and the first seal along with him.

For the first time in a very long time he considers reaching out to Aziraphale. But it's been ten years since they've spoken, twenty or more since they've had a real conversation. Heaven may not even be paying attention to human affairs anymore; besides his lunch with Aziraphale no one's seen an angel since the Adam Young incident.

He passes a few months, gets a new car, refurbishes the house, buying _things_ even though it won't matter when Lilith and Azazel bring on the end of the world. It's about being comfortable, about casually sauntering alongside the idea of Hell on earth no matter how terrifying it is. Earth's bad enough sometimes without adding Hell on top of it.[19]

One night there's the strangest bloody sensation, like something's broken open, like someone's trepanned his skull and it takes him ten solid minutes for his vision to adjust, to let the body's instincts kick in and the terror to set in. Something's gone very, very wrong.

Just as Crowley starts thinking about getting to his feet -- he's been on his hands and knees staring at his oriental rugs in horror since _it_ happened -- he hears delicate footsteps down the corridor. He feels Lilith there before he sees her, and is glad he didn't speak before he saw her; she's wearing a nine-year-old girl in a pink flowery dress spattered with blood. It's nothing he hasn't seen before, but it changes the dynamic more than a little bit.

He pulls himself together in that instant. He has to. "So good to see you, pet, I thought you had another week of holiday," he notes mildly.

She touches his face, her hand still damp with blood, and suddenly wraps her arms around his neck. He pulls her into an embrace, into his lap, not yet courageous enough to reject her even if he wanted to. "I have the best news, Crowley, the best news. Can you guess?"

 _He broke._ It's the only possible thing. Could he have felt the rejoicing of Hell from here? "I'm no good at guessing games, darling, you know that," he says. "Now come on, tell me."

"Didn't you feel it? It was _wonderful_." She presses her cheek to his. "We opened the Gate. We opened the Gate and they're _free_. I'm so happy, we're all going to be together from now on, one happy family, and once our Father joins us -- "

"The Gate," he repeats. He doesn't mean to say it out loud, it just comes out of his mouth because it's never occurred to him. Samuel Colt and his tricks, that was all Aziraphale, but that was a long time ago.

Lilith is too excited to acknowledge his interruption, all but quivering in his lap, he realizes now that he's gone from the blindness of terror to the vivid clarity of horror. "But that's not all," she says, with a wide, toothy smile.

Crowley touches his forehead to hers, puts his hands on her shoulders to calm her. "Tell me," he says quietly.

She leans in and kisses him on the mouth, though he recoils, and smiles beatifically as she says, "We win."

He's still lost. "What do you mean?"

"Azazel is dead and _my_ plan is on its way. _It is written_ , Crowley, it's all happening like it's supposed to. Oh, I'm so happy," she gushes, and kisses him again. "Soon He'll be _back_!"

He might be one of Hell's worst but he's not a fan of the little girl thing, and gently edges her back. "What happened?" he repeats.

She presses her hand to his forehead, his eyes shut and quiver under his eyelids as he sees the contract, the real one, the terms, the name emblazoned on top. "Dean Winchester," he says slowly, as she withdraws her hand.

Lilith nods. "We don't have John anymore, but we have his little boy. That family's the gift that keeps on giving! It's all going according to plan, all thanks to us." She kisses his cheek.

"Us," Crowley repeats, then it dawns on him. _Desperate, righteous men, into Hell in five years or less._ This was actually his work. Well then. "Guess He'll thank us when He gets up here, won't He," he says, with all the capitalization but none of the faith.

"He'll thank you," she agrees, beams at him and crawls out of his lap. "Okay! I have to go change and then we can celebrate."

He kisses her cheek. "Hurry back," he says, and a bit of her grownup smirk sneaks into the little girl's face before she vanishes.

He goes to the computer twice, flicks the monitor on, off, on, off, and spends a half hour pacing and calculating the risk of tracking down an angel at a time like this. By the time he's given himself a headache overthinking it all, Lilith is back, ten years older, brunette, terrible and beautiful and alongside him the bringer of the Apocalypse.


	2. Chapter 2

**Summary for the Chapter:**

> 2007 to 2008; Crowley sizes up the players and stacks his deck in preparation for the coming Apocalypse. _If his time with Lilith's taught him anything, it's that the important thing is to have a Plan, because everyone else does and there's only one winning side._

_Late 2007_

 

Party line dictates to Crowley that he's supposed to be happy that Azazel's pet flung Hell's Gate wide open for a few minutes and allowed some of his brethren to swarm the earth like so many self-satisfied locusts. It goes without saying that he'd rather they hadn't.[1] Still, nothing actually changes, at first. He gets a few more sales reps on his staff and goes about the business like he always has -- casually aggressive, dangerous, asserting himself in Lilith's absence as someone to fear.

Lilith has a reason to be out and about, of course, as she's trying to bring the rabble under her command. The prospect is one of the many things he puts out of his mind, but it's not as though they didn't know this would fall into place at some point.[2]

The point is that it has nothing to do with him. The Gate, the idiot Winchesters, the plan, the horde – it has nothing to do with him. He's in _sales_.

He's enjoying a documentary on sharks when a few of his demons decide to intrude on his personal time, but he's nothing if not an attentive boss. As they approach, he idly figures out who they are. Tristane, the once-witch, the ringleader; Mariel, one of Lilith's favorites; Vivienne, a particularly mean bitch who Crowley likes quite a bit.

"Crowley."

"Yes, what is it," he says, not looking away from the screen.

There's no answer for a moment, so he looks back at them, and quirks an eyebrow. It's not a word that usually gets much use in his vocabulary, but the only way to describe the way the demons are lingering together is "clinging." Nearly quivering. " _Well_?" he presses, not finding their weakness particularly encouraging.

Unsurprisingly, Tristane speaks up rather than either of the girls.[3] "The Winchesters killed Laila," he says, matter-of-fact.

Crowley's starting to think up means of punishment, because the shark's just attacked something on the screen and he's missed it. "Is that all?"[4]

"Not the _body_. Her. He killed _Laila_ ," Mariel retorts, and her hands clench into fists. "With a gun. _The_ gun."

Only one weapon inspires that much fear in a demon as rabidly insane as Mariel, but it doesn't make _sense_. It's not possible. "The Colt," he repeats skeptically.

"We checked," Vivienne rushes to say, at the look on his face. "The bullet's from the Colt. She's dead, Crowley. We can't find her, we've tried to summon her. She's _gone_."

Tristane nods. "Rumor has it Sam Winchester summoned her and killed her on the spot, just -- " He mimicks pulling the trigger on a gun.

Mariel shoves him into Crowley's dining room table, and Vivienne holds her back when she lunges after him. "This isn't a joke, you _idiot_ ," she snaps at him.

"Oh, baby, don't fight. This could be our last night on earth," Tristane drawls back, and laughs when Mariel speechlessly hisses and struggles to get out of Vivienne's grip.

"If any of you break my furniture, I'll fucking break you," Crowley says pointedly, less than impressed.[5]

Vivienne sends Crowley a weary look, shoves Mariel to the other side of the room, and turns to Tristane. "Crowley's right, get serious," she says, and yanks him up to his feet by the collar. "They killed her for not breaking Dean Winchester's deal. What happens if they summon one of us to do the same?"

Tristane pauses, apparently not coming up with a good retort to that one. "Well, obviously we can't do anything _per se_ , until -- "

"Oh, _shut up_ , all of you," Crowley snaps out, and to his credit, it works. He wants to rebuke them for being so shaken by this, but the anger at some idiot human killing one of his best girls sets his jaw and he can't blame them. "Just... keep looking." There's no point, they all know it, but it's something to do while he figures this out. Someone helped those morons rebuild the Colt and with that help they might be able to fight back against the horde.

Even if he could do without most of those who made it out during Hell's prison break, there are more than a few reasons why this gun scares the shit out of him, and only one of those is that the damn thing could kill him, too. He wastes no time gathering what he needs, blasts the summoning circle into the desert sand, and starts to chant.

It's Death Valley, so no one's there to see the rather undramatic flash in the air, and feel the gust of wind after he pronounces the name _Aziraphale_.

Once his feet touch the ground, the angel looks at him coolly, wearing a new vessel but in much the same fashion. "I've always found the summoning rituals to be a bit much," he says lightly. "More your sort's thing than mine."

"Well, it does help that occultists actually believe we exist," Crowley says, lowers his sunglasses, and crosses his arms over his chest. "We have to talk."

Aziraphale glances down at the circle, appraising his work. "On the contrary, there's more reasons not to talk than to continue, I think."

Crowley ignores that, mostly because it's true. "Yes, well. You called me, now I'm calling you. I want to know why you helped those idiots rebuild that gun of yours."

"It was never my gun," Aziraphale starts.

"You told him how to make it," Crowley says wearily. "You might as well have carved the script on the gun yourself. Just answer the question."

"Well, as I haven't seen the Colt in over a century, I _can't_ answer why I might have fixed it," Aziraphale answers, a bit tartly. "No other angel has. We have no garrisons here."

Crowley's spent enough time reading what little body language and tells the angel's got, but there's nothing now. Something's just _different_. He's darker, looser, with more than a few hairs out of place. He doesn't like how this feels. " _You're_ here," he says, to the point.

Aziraphale meets Crowley's gaze without hesitation, in that annoyingly dickish way only angels can. "Yes. Because you summoned me. And now, unless you've some reasonable questions for me, I'm going to leave."

"Any angel could have fixed that gun. You could have inspired a hunter to fix it, through _dreams_ or something equally ridiculous, _I don't know_ ," Crowley retorts. "All I want to know is _why_ you would help those two brats try to survive this when they're so happy to throw themselves into Hellfire itself. It's idiocy. At least give it to someone who might stand a chance."

"No angels fixed the Colt," Aziraphale says, stiff, sharp, and bored like any good soldier of God. Crowley has never really wanted to throw a punch at him, but he's getting close. "We're under strict orders to not interfere. So I suppose this means a demon fixed the gun."

It's nonsensical enough to make Crowley actually laugh. "What demon would fix the only thing in creation that could shoot them dead?"

Aziraphale shrugs. "I suppose you'll have to ask that demon when you meet them."

"It's _suicide_ ," Crowley retorts, now annoyed at being condescended to. "And I don't believe you."

"Believe me or don't," Aziraphale says lightly. "I'm not sure what you expect me to say."

Crowley snaps his fingers, and the holy oil around the summoning circle lights. Aziraphale doesn't even try to move. "The Winchesters killed one of my girls with that gun, angel, and if they keep on shooting their way into trying to break that contract, they might make their way up to me. You made that possible. So tell me -- " He stops before the flames, takes off his sunglasses, and looks the angel dead in the eyes. "Why."

Aziraphale is unmoved, still, the lines in his face clear in the firelight. "It wasn't me."

Just like that, staring into the angel's face, he knows it's the truth. He knows that, he knew that minutes ago, but nothing else makes sense. He flicks his hand to put out the flames, kicks the sand of the circle to release the angel, but Aziraphale doesn't leave even as Crowley lingers, thinking, gathering his things.

"This was quite a risk on your part," he goes on, stepping out of the circle. "I could send you back to Hell, or take you in for questioning."

"Oh yes, Heaven's infamous torturers," Crowley retorts, twisting the top onto the bottle of holy oil. "You wouldn't."

Irritatingly enough, Aziraphale doesn't go away. "You thought I'd repaired the only gun that could kill you, but you called me to neutral territory, _alone_? You must see the problem in that plan -- "

Crowley turns to him. "You're too good, angel, you wouldn't dare touch me," he says, slides his sunglasses on, and approaches Aziraphale. "Go on. Do it." He tips his head forward, just waiting for Aziraphale to send him screaming back to the Pit.

Aziraphale takes a moment to think about it; he raises his hand to eye level, looks at it, and drops it to his side. "You're right. I wouldn't," he says finally, and nods. "Goodnight, Crowley." He turns to go.

The desire to throw a punch rises again, but Crowley restrains himself, too cool for that. "Why not?" he snaps, before Aziraphale goes.

"Because no matter how many demons you've convinced otherwise, I will never believe you're like her," Aziraphale says simply, and vanishes.

It sets Crowley's teeth on edge, for more reasons than one. The angel always has been an obnoxiously honest little twit, and honesty is hardly the policy in the bloody Nearly The End Days.

* * *

 _Early 2008_

 

Crowley is a blessed fool and it's his prerogative to make sure nobody else knows it. He knows more than most about what's really going on, but not enough, and he's investigating, getting intel, despite the fact that all he signed on to do was _sales_ , nothing more. No apocalypses, no End of the World plots.

No, that's a lie. She said it, right to his face. _The End of the World as you know it._

Well, there's no point dredging up discussions from ages ago. Denial is much more comfortable.

Crowley knows better than anyone that the only time a demon might be remotely trustworthy is when you look them in the eye and terrify them into talking, before they can come up with a lie good enough to let them get away from you alive. Not many things scare a demon and few things are guaranteed to, besides Lilith, Alistair, or the prospect of being stuck in the Pit with no means of escape.

Those are the only three he needs. He likes to stick to the classics.

Tristane's playing cards in the back of a smoky Louisiana bar. No one seems to mind that he's playing his idiotic witch card tricks, or they don't dare to mention it.

Once he sees Crowley standing off to the side, nursing a drink and looking hardly impressed, he speaks up. "Gentlemen, say hello to my _boss_."

"Anthony Crowley," he greets the men, one or two of which cautiously shake his hand. "I'm afraid we have a bit of business to discuss, if I might tear you away?" He only bothers with a question mark at the end of that order just to keep the witch from putting up a fight.

"Always business." Tristane slides out of his chair like the slippery little bastard he is. "I'll fold, for now. Why don't you take my seat, John? Trust me, it's quite easy to take their money."

Crowley sets down the glass, grabs the demon by the shoulder and hauls him out the back. "Louisiana? Is this the best you could think of?"

"It's a better market than you'd guess. All sorts of suckers, Crowley, ready to throw away their souls just to feed their family. College education for the kids. It'd be sad if it wasn't so pathetic." Tristane lights up a cigarette and eyes him up and down. "Why don't you ever change it up? Might not have that belly if you did."

Crowley doesn't let Tristane have the pleasure of seeing him give the body he's picked a second look. "When you get older you'll find that body-hopping's frivolous unless you have good reason. Do you think I came here to have you _lecture_ me?"

"No. Of course not," Tristane says, suddenly deferent. "What can I do for you?"

"A demon killed the Seven Deadly Sins back in May," Crowley says, tone crisp as the fires of Hell. "For some reason, I've been having some trouble confirming reports of this, but I thought since you're such a connoisseur of _talk_..."

But there's a pleasant surprise this time; Tristane doesn't shut down like the other demons, only breaking down with the vaguest details under threat. He looks _interested_. "You mean Ruby? That little bitch has been begging for a spanking for years, if you ask me."

"Ruby," Crowley repeats; he recognizes the name from somewhere.[6] "Well, _go on_ ," he presses Tristane.

"She was a witch. Loved her weapons but the sound of her voice even more. Thought she'd never make it into the Pit. Oh, we had some _fun_ with her."

Tristane's busy reminiscing about this, but it fits. A witch from Tristane's era might just know how to fix it, a demon who's been around long enough to have heard of the Colt, who knows old spells and occult weapons well enough to surviving a turn on the demons that tempted her and doomed her to the Pit.

The little bastard's still talking. Crowley cuts him off. "And I suppose she crawled out of the Pit with the other vermin."

"Heard as much. Some of us were planning to hunt her down, but you've been keeping us busy." Tristane shrugs. "Can I get back to it? Ten minutes and I've got John's soul in the bag."

"If it means you'll work, by all means, go." The kid's still lingering, so Crowley adds, "Keep your tongue to yourself about all this, and your eyes and ears open, and you might see a commendation coming your way. Do we have an understanding?"

That always appeals to his kids. Greedy little bastards, every last one of them, and he has to appreciate that. "Of course. We'll get those fucking Winchesters and make them pay, I know," Tristane says, upbeat all of the sudden, and goes back into the bar.

Crowley can't remember a time when he himself was actually stupid enough to say something like that, with certainty, without cynicism. He's pretty sure that he's spent the entirety of Creation since the Fall knowing only one thing, and it's that things were headed downhill from that point until the End.

He doesn't have much difficulty finding Lilith. It's been a month since he's seen her and there wasn't any talk, or he might have dared to ask some questions; there was just her presence weakening him from his first glance at her and her blood-soaked mouth harsh against his.

It never used to be a question of finding her. She always found him, because he was part of her plan. Now, as the plan moves forward, he's just carrying on the business. Deals. Desperate human after desperate human begging for something, ready to give it all up for one thing and the time to delude themselves that it was worth it.

If he were to think a little harder about that lifestyle, he might not be so smug. But that's what drinking is for.

She's behind this door. He can hear the demons talking inside, something serious, and he can feel the start of something building. Still. Someone needs to run the crossroads operation, so he supposes there isn't much risk to his life in interrupting her.

Once he's inside, before he can even take the scene in, Lilith turns back to him just slightly and says casually, "Crowley, come join us."

There's a woman hanging from her chained wrists along a butcher's hook on the ceiling, the blood draining out of cuts along each of her arteries into a trough. A child's body has already been drained, cast aside, and two demons are busy at work on the walls.

Crowley goes to her side, fondly touching the top of her head. The blonde hair of the third-grader she's taken this time is stained with blood, and his fingers stick as he smoothes her hair. "You're working a spell."

Lilith nods. "You'll see," she says, in a child's self-important tone. "Just wait."

He could wait. But he's better than this, dammit. He crouches beside her. "I have to talk to you, pet," he says, patient and understanding as he can manage. "It's about Ruby."

She turns to him instantly at that, and he realizes he's just startled _Lilith_. The fear fades after a second. After weeks, he remembers now, life with Lilith; the sense that you could be killed at any moment, the relief that she's actually bothered to spare insignificant blessed _you_ out of all of those she's murdered, but most of all, the feeling of living life under her blank stare like a loaded gun.

"I don't want to talk about Ruby. I'm working a spell," Lilith says, and flounces forward, ignoring him.

Crowley doesn't like how this is going. "Do you know Ruby?" he asks after a moment, watching her fingerpaint sigils with the mother's blood on the opposite wall.

"She's making trouble. I told you that if you _waited_ you'd see." She draws a rectangle as tall and wide as she can make it and kicks over the trough, stomping her foot into the blood. "THAT'S ENOUGH! NOW!"

The other demons hurriedly finish their work as the blood scorches against the wall, and the rectangle starts to smolder -- then for an instant a snapshot flickers between the lines of flame, an image that continues like a film projected against the wall. Two men in their twenties and a demon on a dark road.

"Ruby," Lilith hisses.

Crowley takes a moment to look at the Winchesters, as he's never seen the boys' faces.[7] Lilith stops the picture and huffs, the flames reacting with a flash that makes Crowley lower his sunglasses. "That's her, Crowley. That's your _Ruby_."

He has another reason to look at the spell. "That's the _Colt_." He steps forward, pulls off his sunglasses to examine it, and turns back to her. "You knew about this? You knew this little bitch helped them rebuild the Colt?"

She stops, and looks up at him with some skepticism. "Is that what you've been worrying everyone about?"

All right, this is absurd. "That gun killed one of our girls, of course I'm _worrying_ , Lilith," he retorts, "you've got all of these _plans_ and you've got some idiot hunters walking around with a working Colt that a _demon_ is ready to fix and fill with ammunition! That gun could kill me, it could kill you, it could kill any _chance_ of your aspirations -- "

Lilith is staring at him now. "You think that silly little gun can kill me?"

He would normally back down, but this is for her good. If her own insane ego will put her in danger, Crowley has to say something. "I know it can."

Now she's angry; the other demons flee, and the house starts to burn. "You think I don't know how to _handle_ this?" she demands, her childish voice breaking but her demonic voice full-throated. "Who do you think I am?"

He backs up, his body's hair scorching against the flames crawling up the wall, but he doesn't care, just talks. "You have a plan? You have a plan. You have a plan, you always have a plan, darling, I know," he says, consoling. "Just tell me... something, anything, let me help you."

Lilith grabs his hands and pulls him to his knees -- he falls there, desperate in the start of terror from the _nothing_ in her eyes. "Do what you do," she says, almost _reasonable_ after all of that, and pulls his face close to hers into a kiss on the mouth. "That's all I've ever asked you to do. Remember?"

He feels like an idiot. Of the two of them, she's not the child here. She's the leader of the horde, how couldn't she know what he had just managed to scrounge up? "Of course," he says, and exhales. "About time to go, don't you think?"

She nods, all business, and releases him. "I'll be right there."

True to her word, she shows up. The exhilaration of walking the line between loving her and fearing her overtakes him, and he doesn't say another word for fear it might push her away again. Maybe he's lost his mind, maybe he's completely lost himself in serving her, but the second he hears the click of high heels and sees that smirk cross her face, he couldn't care less about guns, hunters, or the end of the world.

* * *

 _February 2008_

 

Within that week, everything seems to solidify. A good two-thirds of the demons lucky enough to be topside have seen the benefits of joining the horde, and Lilith's plans move plainly forward. Crowley sees little of her after she reminds him with pain and love and sex what he agreed to, what he's done, what his role is in all of this.

He doesn't doubt that she knows what she's doing. Whether what she's doing is wrong in itself isn't for him to judge, not now, not in the position he's in.

He has no choice but to be evil. He _is_ evil. He's a demon. The end of the world and all the suffering that comes with it is part of the territory, and he knew that from the start.

This train of thought calls for another glass of scotch, but the doorbell rings.

" _FedEx_ ," Crowley scoffs to himself, and pushes himself up.[8] He opens the door and regards the FedEx man with some annoyance. "Yes, what," he says.

"A message for you, and two packages, if you'll just -- " FedEx holds out the electronic signing bit, and Crowley just takes it and scribbles _A.J. Crowley_. Apparently put off,[9] he just hands the envelope over. "Have a good day."

Once he's alone, he hefts the packages inside, shuts the door, and opens the message first.

 _Yes, this is meant for you. Open it._

That's all it says. He easily opens the first package by searing the tape with a smooth run of his fingertip against the line, and releases a breath at seeing that it's only full of _books_. Short, pulpy books, by the look of it.

A note falls out of the first he picks up to examine.

 _C -_

 _We're being watched. You'd do best to read them all, painful as it might be. They're short, at least._

 _A_

Just like that, this all makes a bit sense. _Books._ Of course. Now he knows who to blame.

"What are you trying to drag me into," he mutters under his breath, but the effort means the angel must think it's important. He takes the books upstairs, along with his scotch, and settles in to read _Supernatural_ , by Carver Edlund.

 _CROWLEY._

He's left the television on (blank, but on). It's Lilith and she never, ever communicates with him this way. That alone is enough to startle him into dropping the book.[10] Then he exhales. "Yes, pet," he says, completely casual. "Is there something you need?"

 _I NEED YOU TO STEAL THE COLT._

Out of all the things he expected to hear from her, that wasn't one of them. "The Colt? I thought we weren't concerned -- "

 _YOU SAID YOU WOULD HELP ME, CROWLEY._

He glances down at the book, the eerily prescient book, and nods, though she can't see it. "I'll get right on that."

 _I KNOW YOU CAN DO IT. MAKE ME PROUD._

It makes this stupid little smirk start to tug at the corner of his mouth before he gets control of himself. Even when she's the voice of Hell, she knows him best, and knows that pride is the only sin that can get him to agree to something this dangerous.

As it turns out, once he clears the alcohol from his system and finishes reading the books, there's something of a plan already forming in the back of his head.[11] If his time with Lilith's taught him anything, it's that the important thing is to have a Plan, because everyone else does and there's only one winning side.

Aziraphale is resting comfortably behind the bookshop's counter with a thermos that's presumably full of tea, and still hanging about in the same feckless-looking thirty-something vessel.[12] Crowley slips inside without disturbing the bell over the door and pretends to browse until the pair of geeky co-eds wandering through the angel's stacks finally leave.

"I'm impressed at your patience," Aziraphale speaks up, and is looking directly at Crowley from halfway across the shop. "You never did have a mind to stand around and wait. I can't complain, it is a virtue after all."

There's something different. It could be that the angel's accent is slipping, or the fact that he has mundane things like a phone, address, and a shop when he's the only angel that anyone in Hell is even remotely aware has set foot on Earth in twenty years or more. It could be any of that, or all of that, or something even more obvious, but it's getting to him, like one of those Magic Eye pictures.

He simply shrugs after Aziraphale prompts him with a look. "I thought it best to thank you in person for the gifts, although I'm not sure what made you think I was a fan of semi-homoerotic Christian mythological fantasy."[13]

Aziraphale primly replaces the cap on his thermos and pulls his stool forward. "I hope you realize how serious this is," he begins.

"Yes, the publishing industry must be struggling if Carver Edlund is getting paid for writing this." Crowley pulls the most recent of them, _Sin City_ , from his jacket as he approaches the counter, and holds it up as though he's seriously considering dropping it into the nearest bin. "Next time, give me a gift card, would you? Or store credit."

Aziraphale takes it from him and thumbs through the pages. "I think I've worked it out, Crowley. It's possible you were right after all."

Not what he expected to hear, although he's not about to say _I told you_ so quite yet. "Go on," he says.

"The big one," Aziraphale says, in a very measured, reasonable tone. "It's about humanity. It isn't... the forces of Heaven against the forces of Hell. We can only end and rebuild Creation with human hands."

It clicks in his head just then, what's changed, but Crowley isn't sure on his mental math exactly yet so he holds his tongue. "You remembered that?"

"I thought it was unbelievable, at the time. Now, I think they're more than capable of managing it without our help at all, and -- " Aziraphale cuts himself off and sets the book down; he meets Crowley's gaze easily. "It's going to happen."

The bare basics of Azazel's plan are already in those books, and Aziraphale is smart, so Crowley has to tread lightly to keep from revealing the rest. "And that's why Heaven's got an outpost here, to inspire a psychic to chronicle all of this to brag, later, once you presumably win? That's a little bloody presumptuous, even for Heaven, don't you think?"

Aziraphale seems skeptical, then incredulous as Crowley just looks mildly back at him without elaborating. "Do you really have your head buried that far in the sand?" he asks Crowley flatly.

Well, so much for avoiding this part of the conversation. "Do you _really_ expect me to tell you everything so you can run back to your superiors? I'm not blind," Crowley retorts. "They set you straight, _obedient_ , and now all they have to do is tug on your leash and you come running back."

Aziraphale indignantly draws himself up at the insult. "Between the two of us, Crowley, I'm not the one on a leash," he says tartly.

It stings, enough that he doesn't think before he snaps back. "I don't think you can even begin to imagine the situation I'd be in if I wasn't working for Lilith right now, so don't you judge -- "

The angel actually cuts him off -- actually looks _annoyed_. "I'll hazard a guess and say it isn't much different than the situation an angel would find himself in after speaking out of turn in wartime."

Crowley's a demon and the sympathy that for some reason is stirring up in the back of his head is just an affectation, because there's no way that this can happen. This is purely professional, and always has been. "No one stood up for you? What a pity."

"We have torturers. We have prison." Aziraphale's staring past him, at the window. "And I don't have many friends."

Crowley picks up one of the peppermint candies in the take-a-penny bowl, opens it, and eats it. "You had an entire garrison in the 1950s," he points out.

"Yes, and now they're being led by someone else," Aziraphale says, distantly.

The peppermint is old, but it's a distraction. "Sorry, angel, but I seem to have missed the point of all this," Crowley says, and tosses the wrapper away.

Aziraphale drums his fingers on the counter and finally says, "The point is... either you're almost irretrievably in denial or you genuinely want to bring on the end of the world."

"I want to survive," Crowley answers, blithely honest. "The rest is just window-dressing."

"Well," Aziraphale says, taken aback by that response for some reason. "We win. When you bring this on, you might not survive."

This puts a bad taste in Crowley's mouth, because Aziraphale has never been the type to bluff. "So Heaven knows."[14]

Aziraphale wears this perturbed, opaque look for a long moment, and finally says, "No." Apparently the angel sees the annoyed look start to cross Crowley's face, because he continues. "It's _ineffable_. It's all written. They know it's going to happen. The details..."

"You don't _know_?" Crowley can't help but be incredulous. It's a little ridiculous that he knows more about the inner workings of Hell than Aziraphale knows about Heaven.

"No," Aziraphale says, and looks so tired all of the sudden that Crowley has to shove his suspicions back before he starts asking unprofessional questions. "I don't."

"And you expect me to tell you what I know."

His skeptical tone doesn't get a rise out of the angel. "You could confirm a few things for me, but I'm more interested in getting your help in preventing this," Aziraphale says.

"Are you serious?" Crowley hisses, just as the bell over the door rings. It sets him on edge, and he's suddenly hypersensitive to all of the potential eyes and ears of Hell that could be spying. "I should be going."[15]

Aziraphale shrugs it off and gives a cursory nod to the new customer as he passes by. "Think about it, then, you know where to find me," he says to Crowley, mild as anything.

Crowley picks up the book. "Thank you," he says, acknowledging the help, if a little grudgingly.

Aziraphale just nods, but before he puts the book back in his jacket, adds casually, "Bela isn't her real name, in case you were wondering."

If it's going to be like that, he might as well. "How is he doing it?" Crowley half-demands, brandishing the book.

"He's a prophet." Crowley stares at him, but Aziraphale just shrugs. "He must be. I don't suggest visiting him."

A prophet. As the consequences of that sink in, the angel adds helpfully, "If you'll excuse me, I was on break."

"It would be nice to have a break," Crowley says, darkly deprecating as he always is when he's in this doomed mood. "Best of luck in not selling anything."

"Cheers," Aziraphale says, and glances away from Crowley as he leaves, pouring himself a cup of tea from his thermos.

Her name isn't Bela, but she matters. She matters enough for a prophet with the foresight of cosmic proportions and the vocabulary of a sixth form student to include her run-in with the Winchester brothers in the story of the end of the world. The Winchester family itself...

That'll come in time. No reason to get ahead of himself. Crowley heads home to break out his Johnnie Walker Blue, think this over, and hide the damn prophet's books the best he can.

* * *

 _March 2008_

 

It takes Crowley less than two hours to figure out who _Bela Talbot_ really is. For the past five years, several demons have had their fill of the little bitch interfering, stealing and vanishing behind pseudonym after pseudonym, and the only woman he's heard cursed more often in recent memory is the literally backstabbing Ruby.

She's not a witch, he's grateful for that, but from one look at her contract, she could be just as much trouble.

Crowley slips into her apartment despite all her security measures, takes a seat on her couch, and the liberty of pouring himself a drink from her liquor cabinet.

Thankfully she shows up before he gets too bored. "Hello, Abby," he greets her, and toasts her with his glass.

Bela pulls the door shut behind her without taking her eyes off of him, and approaches him, a glint of careful curiosity in her eye. "Hello," she returns, setting her purse aside. "I'm afraid you've caught me off-guard, have we been introduced?"

"No," Crowley says openly, and relaxes back. "Pour yourself a drink, we need to talk."

She hesitates only for an instant, then rethinks it and goes to the liquor cabinet. "Of course."

He watches her prepare a cocktail. It's been nearly ten years, but it's almost too easy to see the scared, homicidal little teenage girl she must have been when she started on this path. "You have a reputation out there, you know."

"I know," she says, and takes a demure sip of her cocktail as she meets his gaze without pause. "I've earned it."

"Entirely possible." Crowley drinks as she crosses to sit on the same couch, a reasonable distance away. He sets his glass aside and extends his hand. "Crowley," he introduces himself.

She shakes his hand -- a cautious, but firm handshake -- and with a touch of unappreciative sarcasm, adds, "I would introduce myself, but you seem to know who I am."

He shrugs and plays it quite casual; he's got millennia of experience in lies and manipulation, no human stands a chance once he's got the upper hand. "Well, to be honest, the contract said it all, Abigail."

"Bela," she retorts, and flashes this thin, charming and completely insincere smile at him. "It's Bela."

"Of course it is." Crowley ignores that. "You made a deal with one of my subordinates... oh, nearly ten years ago, wasn't it?" Her smile thins, but he goes on. "Now we're considering what you might do for us, and we may possibly do something for you."

Bela's a good actress, keeping her face carefully bland, and Crowley is less worried now. If she thinks that's going to work, he may have overestimated her.[16] "Well, Mr. Crowley, I'm listening," she prompts.

"You've met the Winchester brothers," he says outright. "They're... a thorn in my side."

She starts to smirk. It's sexier than her smile, actually; as humans go, she's turning out to be more tolerable than he might have guessed. "I understand completely. What is it I can do for you?"

"They have something in their possession that belongs to me," Crowley lies sleekly.[17] "You're going to get it back for me."

"A theft." Bela presses her hand to her mouth, and smiles as she tries not to laugh. "Is that all?"

In retrospect, she might be better than he thought. He sends her an appreciative look and drinks. "Yes," he says. "That easy, then? They're as dim as I've heard?"

"I wouldn't use the word stupid," she says, thoughtfully. "They're just... _men_."

Crowley raises his eyebrows at her as he considers her over the rim of his glass, then sets it aside to pull the picture from his jacket. "Look. Look closely. Destroy the photo. Contact me once you've got it, and we'll consider further negotiations. Oh, and if you try to sell this gun on the market, you'll enter Hell much sooner than you ever expected, are we clear?"

"We're clear." Bela stares at the yellowed picture of the Colt, takes in the sigils, the pentacle carved into the handle. "Promise me we'll renegotiate the terms of my deal once this gun is in your hands, and we have an agreement."

He considers that, the terms he can't in honesty _promise_ , and gives a slight nod as his only answer. "If they have any brains at all, it'll be under heavy security, but I'm sure you can handle that."

"I'm insulted that you would think any less of me," she says. "Now, do we seal this with a kiss, Mr. Crowley?"

"No need for that," he dismisses, but can't avoid the slightest smirk as she leans over to kiss both his cheeks.

"How do I contact you?" she asks, cool as anything.

Crowley pulls a card from his jacket as well, and holds it out to her between two fingers. "It's been a pleasure dealing with you, ... ah, _Bela_."

"And you, Mr. Crowley." Bela is relaxed, reassured, certain she's got a way out of her deal. It's a lie, but if anyone would understand his reasons for doing this, it would be someone cutthroat enough to murder her own family for freedom, money and ten years to come up with a Plan B.

They all have their own roles in the coming End, after all. All he's done is cast her.

* * *

 _Still March 2008_

 

"Crowley? It's me. We should talk. You know where to find me."

Crowley has to say that out of the millions of humans he's dealt with in his lifetime, Bela Talbot is proving to be among the most reliable of the lot. It's been just under two weeks since their little conversation. If she did her research and shopped the gun around, that would mean she's had it in hand for only a few days.

It took her a week to find a situation where the Winchesters would drop their guard long enough to allow her to steal the Colt. He never questions their overall idiocy, but the family's notable for their preparedness and paranoia.

Well, it's no real surprise. Men always fall victim to pretty faces.

He puts off finding Bela, nevertheless. It's not likely her contract will be broken, but considering that without any magical or demonic help she managed to part the Winchesters from their only real weapon against Hell, there's a possibility that Lilith might at least _think_ about it.

Of course, Lilith is too busy to have any sort of thoughtful discussion with him, as she's wreaking literal Hell across the United States and further with her increasingly rabid army. Most of them are happy to follow her, for the bloodshed and the implied endgame. Crowley hasn't seen the worst of the Pit so fervently ready to work together since the name _Lucifer_ started echoing through the ranks again.

Two weeks later Lilith calls him to her side. She's massacred a suburban family one by one, and the girl she's wearing has ginger curls, freckles, and a room all decorated with horses, horse-riding awards and all. She looks up at him from the bed, wearing a decidedly bored expression.

"Read me a story, Crowley?" she asks coyly.

He wishes that he wasn't already used to this, and settles in next to her, accepting the book from her.

She wrests the book from his hand to open it to the right page, and hands it back to him. "This one. I want you to read _this_ one."

It's a child's version of the story of Persephone and Hades, less a tale of abduction and seduction and more a warning against talking to strangers, but Lilith seems to enjoy it all the way up until the part where Demeter's sorrow ravages the landscape and covers it with leaves and snow.

She stares at the bleak illustrations, seizes the book and petulantly throws it across the room. "I don't understand," she snaps at Crowley.

He sends her a blandly curious look -- he should be afraid, but he isn't. "What, pet?"

She glares at him. "Why is she sad?" she demands, pointing at the book, still tented awkwardly on the floor. "She should be _happy_. Persephone gets to be _queen_. Why doesn't Demeter understand that? Why would she want to be a little girl when she could be a queen? Every little girl wants to be a queen."

Crowley knows how to answer that one. "Because Demeter's being a selfish bitch," he said sensibly. "She wants Persephone to herself, even if Persephone would rather be eating a pomegranate with Hades."[18]

"You're right," Lilith says, with a firm nod, and settles down at that. She has a bit of dried blood on the back of her hand, and she licks it off, looking thoughtful. "Can you tell Him something for me?" she asks suddenly.

He can hear that capitalized H, and there's only one Him. "I could," he starts, when he trusts he can fake the proper reverence. "Once He's back. But you can tell Him yourself."

" _No_." She grabs the arm of his jacket and tugs him closer, and in her flat white eyes he sees something that looks a lot like _anxiety_. "No. They won't let me, Crowley. He talked to me, I still hear Him whisper in my dreams but they said no. They said I can't."

Crowley stares at her, just as wide-eyed as she is, until he supposes he's figured out what's going on. "They aren't going to kill you," he says firmly. "I found the Colt." There's only a split-second pause before he commits himself to the lie. "Destroyed it. They don't have a chance."

Lilith's gaze hardens, and she shoves him back into the pillows. "You think I meant the Winchesters?"

"No one in Hell opposes you," he points out, forcing himself to stay still and not slink back. "Who can keep you from speaking to Lucifer, once He's returned?"

"You don't know _anything_ ," she says. This seems to come as a complete and disgusting surprise to her.[19] "You don't know any of it, do you?"

He's spared having to answer that by his cell phone going off with the tinny factory ringtone, and she gives a disgusted sigh before turning away from him, curling up on her side. "Yes, what?" he answers, not bothering to see who's calling.

"Oh, and you were doing such a fine job of screening my calls," Bela says dryly. "Well, can we get on with this deal, or am I going to have to find another partner?"

Crowley considers leaving to continue this conversation in relative privacy, but Lilith is busy sulking for Hell knows what reason and he just carries on. "Don't even think about it. Now you can stop calling, I'll get to you when I find the time."

"Of course. Thank you for your business, Mr. Crowley." Her voice dips into professional courtesy. "I'll leave you to your work."

Humans. _Women._ He unceremoniously hangs up on her and looks to Lilith, who's now sending him a curious look. "I want to break a deal," he says, to the point.

Lilith laughs openly at that, then sits up to examine him skeptically when he doesn't crack a smile. "You're _serious_?"

"Bela Talbot. She helped forward your plan, pet. She'll go to Hell as it is," he figures. "She's done everything I've asked of her, and -- "

" _Abby_ Talbot," she cuts in, her voice going shrill, and with a flick of her hand pins him against the nearest wall as she starts to rant. "I know her name, I picked her myself. And I need her. I need her near the _Winchesters_ , I need her so I can move _forward_ , you don't know anything, Crowley! This isn't your plan, it's _mine_!"

He really hates this, there's no point arguing with her; all of the sudden he's just fucking exhausted with it all. "Fine," he says, and once released from her grip, rests against the wall as though he meant to lurk right there. "I thought I'd ask, but I forgot we'll all be rewarded once Lucifer is back among us, et cetera." He slides on his sunglasses and catches her glaring at him. "Do you need me for anything more, love? Work to do."

"You – " She makes this awful frustrated, furious half-scream, and throws her hand up. There's a blast of light that he barely sees before every atom of Crowley is forced out of the body he's had for years, and sent crackling and reeling straight back to Hell.

He comes to a long way from the Malebolge. The first words out of his mouth are, "That _bitch_."

It's going to be a long way home.

* * *

 _Spring 2008_

 

Thanks to Lilith's temper, Crowley spends what he can only guess is most of the month of April in Hell. He pretends he arrived there for his own reasons, gathers intel, kicks some demons around, but he's got no way back up. Meanwhile on topside, the dead body he's worn for ten years or so now is probably good and rotted on the floor.

Still, the Malebolge isn't so bad for the higher-ups – he can get some sleep,[20] to start, and play the occasional game of fetch with the hellhounds. Midway through the tenth year, though, the company's grown so obnoxious, counting down to Dean Winchester's arrival and torture, that he's about ready to try escaping the Pit by climbing.[21]

That's when it happens: he's dragged back topside. Summoned. He's as surprised as anyone, especially when he sees who's standing outside of the circle.

Aziraphale dusts off his hands. "Had a bit of a mishap?" he asks mildly.

"I just spent a decade in Hell, don't test me," Crowley warns, and looks down at the body he's grabbed. "Perfect. A teenager."

The angel appraises him. "I think it suits you quite well, really."

"You _summoned_ me," Crowley says, as he realizes what that really means. "You really just pulled me from Hell?"

"Yes," Aziraphale says impatiently. "To the point, Crowley, by this rite I'm allowed a question, so I'm going to ask, did you see Dean Winchester there?"

It's not the question he expected, but he hates this part. "No," he answers honestly, forced to.[22] "He's alive. Both of them are, so says Hell, why?"

The angel seems to relax, and hands over a fastidiously-folded newspaper. Crowley stares at the front page, a piece about an explosion at a police station in Colorado. About a dozen dead, among them, two fugitives, Sam and Dean Winchester.

"Lilith set a few dozen demons on the Winchesters," Aziraphale says, while Crowley reads. "They exorcised them, apparently, but rumor has it that Lilith herself went back to finish them off." He looks deadly serious when Crowley looks up at him. "I had to be sure. One month in Hell could be enough."

"Well, I'll say one thing for them, they're lucky," Crowley says, and throws the newspaper back to Aziraphale, who barely catches it.

"Ah, another thing," the angel says, and pauses, purses his lips. "Your body is in intensive care at the Catholic hospital downtown. It was on the news. They seem to think you're some sort of important investor?"

"I am," he says, not without irony, and shakes his head in disbelief. "I can't believe you _summoned_ me. Angels doing satanic rituals, what next?"

"Mm," Aziraphale murmurs, dismissing that, and smudges a line in the chalk of the devil's trap with his shoe. "Before you run off, let him go now, please. He'll need his sleep, he has work in the morning."

Crowley looks down at himself again – he's in a _uniform_ , a cheap one, with a nametag. _Troy._ "Wait. This is your shop," he realizes. "You've _hired_ someone? You're actually running a business?"[23]

"I am," Aziraphale says, lightly condescending, as though it makes total sense.[24] "Now, have you gone to see her yet?"

An intentionally vague question, but he gets it. Even with all of his conversations with Bela, the prophet apparently hasn't seen him yet. Good. "You'll see, when it matters."

Aziraphale seems nettled by that answer, but begins to clean up the ritual as reasonably as though it's spilt coffee. "As always. You can go," he points out.

No point in dawdling. He leaves the teenage body and grabs his own the second it's in sight. His recovery shocks the doctors, who'd supposed him braindead, and barely tolerates the press, who want their "human interest story." He gets the hell out the next day, and makes the call the moment he finds his cell.

"It's me," he says to Bela's voicemail, "and we need to talk. Call me."

* * *

 _April 2008_

 

After a week of no reply from Bela, Crowley checks on her contract to see if it's been closed, if she's dead. No, she's still very much alive, and he's having more trouble than usual finding her.[25] There's only three weeks left in Dean Winchester's deal and thirty-six hours left in Bela's, and he knows human instinct better than to think the Colt being kept from his hands is a coincidence.

His first instinct is to warn Lilith, but just as quickly he considers who exactly gave him a one-way ticket home.

No. He calls Bela again.

"That gun is mine, Abigail," he hisses at her voicemail. "Don't forget it." He snaps the phone shut.

Her location's hard to pin down, because she keeps moving. Within an hour he's worked two and a half spells[26] and just about has her position, when his phone starts to buzz against the table.

"Oh, there you are," he says, all sharp and no affection.

"Crowley." The spell starts to work, burning away the map as she anxiously talks. "I only have a day left, you must know that, if we're going to do this we have to do this now."

Just like that he knows where she is, down to the hotel room, and he goes, without hesitation. She lowers the phone as she sees him standing there, and he closes his own phone with a deliberate _click_.

"I'd like the gun now," he says, quite patiently, considering.

"You can't really expect me to hand it over without some negotiations," she says, slightly appalled. "Twenty more years."

Crowley doesn't even acknowledge it. "No. Show me the gun."

Bela's gaze remains solidly on him as she reaches under the bed and pulls out the gun. She shows it to him with a flourish and sets it on the bed. "If I've lost your good faith in this last week, Mr. Crowley, I really must apologize, but I've had some real dogs nipping at my heels." She starts a grim smile, and picks up the Colt. "Those boys really want this back."

"Boys and their toys," Crowley says, droll as he can manage, and holds his hand out for the gun. "We had a deal."

She considers that, then points the gun at him and deliberately cocks it. "You said you would break my deal."

Unfortunately, he saw that coming, so his best bet is a bluff. "I said we'd take it into consideration," he says mildly, doing his best not to react.[27] "You don't actually think that's going to work on me, do you? Honestly. _Humans_."

"Oh, it will. This is a very special gun," Bela says thoughtfully, and skims her gaze over it before she looks up at him, supremely confident. "I did some research, Crowley, and this is quite a find. They call it 'the Colt,' you know, and they say it can kill anything. Even you."

Well, feigning ignorance was worth a shot. He drops it. "Killing me won't end your deal. So unless you have some insane grudge against me worth killing your last chance of survival, I suggest that you put the gun down so we can talk."

"That's what it takes to get a conversation out of a man, being held at gunpoint," she says conversationally, and uncocks the gun. "I don't hold grudges."[28] She leans forward. " _So_. Let's talk. Who's _we_?"

Crowley raises his eyebrows at her. "What?"

"You said just now that ' _we'd_ take it into consideration.' Meaning you, and someone else. Who else is there?"

Just like that, dizzyingly, he gets it. _We're being watched._ This is it, and this is what he was meant to do. One more reason he doesn't like prophecy. "She was right, you really are going to be something," he says, and takes a casual seat on the other bed.

"I don't have the time for games, we both know that. Who is she?" Bela presses.

"In situations like this I tend to stand in for the woman in charge." Crowley glances at his watch, just to press that mortality button of hers one more time, and then looks back to her. "She has better things to do than deal with the lot of you. Humanity can be so self-centered sometimes."

"I asked you a question, Crowley." She's losing her patience.

"Now, Bela, honestly, I'm disappointed," he says. "All of this time and you never thought to ask who actually held your contract? You never tried to find a way out – never thought to ask the right questions? I misjudged you."

Bela's voice drops, her glare cold. "I want to know who to blame when I'm burning in Hell. Besides you, of course. Consider it a dying wish."

Interesting. "Is that your offer?" Crowley asks sleekly. "The name, for the gun?"

She looks down at the Colt for a moment, then picks it up, examines it before she decisively answers. " _Yes._ I want to know."

He leans forward. "She holds your contract – she holds every contract, Abigail. She made the first deal and she'll make the last." He puts his hand over hers, over the warming metal of the Colt. "She made me what I am, and she'll do the same for you, one day. And you haven't got a chance against her."

The Colt falls easily into his hands, but she touches his arm to stop him withdrawing. "You were never going to let me go."

"No," he says, honest at least this once. "I never could."

He can see the last bit of hope dying in her eyes, but he can't say he pities her. Much. "Just tell me her name, Crowley," she says. "Give me that."

"Lilith." It isn't until he says it that he realizes how deeply she's tainted him, how much he misses her, and how much he'll regret this in the future, because the Prophet isn't chronicling him, or Bela, or even the angels. It's chronicling the Winchesters, and even Lilith knows what's coming. _They won't let me, Crowley._

The girl stares at him, silently, as he impassively opens the cartridge and counts the bullets.[29] Then he snaps the gun shut and looks back up at her. "Her name is Lilith," he repeats, as though she hadn't heard.

She leans in, kisses him on the mouth, and closes his hand over the gun. "Thank you," she says softly.

"I'll see you in Hell," he says, and she presses her hand to her mouth as she can't help but laugh at the terrible irony of it.

There's been entirely too much mercy tonight.[30] He stands, tucks the gun at his back, and that's when Bela's hotel room door opens.

Bela goes instantly still at the sight of a little girl on the other side of her previously locked door, but Crowley knows better. She's all sweetness and curls, and nobody cynical enough can be fooled.[31] "Hello, Crowley," Lilith says, and her eyes go white when she turns to the girl. "We need you, Abby. We need you to play a game. Do you want to play?"

The door slams shut without any provocation, but Bela doesn't flinch. "Always," she says, not a sign of her previous breakdown evident now. She sends Crowley a deliberate look before she asks, "What can I do for you… it's Lilith, isn't it?"

He tenses, but Lilith just gives a rather big sigh for such a little body. "Oh, _Crowley_." She pats his arm as she passes him by on the way to talk to Bela. "I need you to kill the Winchesters for me," she explains. "Especially Sam. Okay?"

If Crowley wasn't looking for it, he wouldn't see it with how fast she recovers, but Bela wasn't expecting that. "You want me to kill Sam Winchester?" She shrugs. "If you'll break my deal," she concedes.

Lilith smiles beatifically.[32] "Kill him, and I'll break your deal," she agrees.

Bela doesn't even take a moment to consider it. "I'll do it."

Crowley can feel the Colt, a weight in the back of his trousers, and his conscience, as Bela sends him a look of muted triumph.[33] Lilith cheerfully latches onto his arm, and he instantly crouches down to get to her level. "It's so good to have you back," she says, and takes his arm. "Let's go."

He looks to Bela. "But, pet -- "

"She can handle it. Keep in touch," Lilith says smartly to her, and takes Crowley's cell phone from his pocket. "We'll be waiting for your call."

"I'm not finished," Bela says easily, ever the level-headed professional, even facing one of Hell's worst. Crowley can't help but be impressed. "Why do you want them dead?"

Just like that, Lilith's good mood cools. "That isn't part of our deal."

The amazing part is that Bela isn't afraid of that look on her face.[34] "You would have never had the chance to kill them in Colorado if it weren't for me," she says smoothly. "They would have the only gun that could kill you if it weren't for me. So I think I deserve an answer. Why do you want them dead?"

"Because they're _mine_." Lilith seizes Crowley's hand. "Dean is _mine_ , and three weeks is too long, I want him _now_. So get him for me, get both of them, and I break your deal."

With that, Lilith abruptly takes him away to her new hunting ground, and Crowley doesn't have much of a choice in the matter.[35]

She has to feed. He hates that part, so he takes the chance to fetch the Colt from the drawer he stashed it in and hide it along with the Prophet's books, the little research he's done, and all evidence he's ever spoken to Aziraphale. For one of Hell's formerly most wanted tortured, it's a lot of evidence against him. It seems that once you're in danger for long enough, you aren't in any danger at all.

He gets back in time, lets her cuddle against his side like a child and fall asleep there, and answers each of Bela's calls. He waits, but midnight passes without a call, with Lilith dozing comfortably, and he knows.

No one outplays Lilith, except him.

* * *


	3. Chapter 3

_September 2008_

Dean Winchester breaks the first seal on an otherwise completely boring Thursday in August.

For some reason it surprises him when the Winchester brothers completely fail in their fight against Hell. There was this idea floating around that the Winchesters were real contenders, unlike most hunters, who turn out to be target practice more often than not. But Dean, he breaks like a cheap London chopstick compared to Daddy, and Sam, well, all of the birdies are saying he's running around with that bitch Ruby again.[1]

The angels show up at Hell's gate within the week of Dean's death. They don't stop pushing their way through the circles, so Crowley has to put up with Beelzebub and the rest of Hell's bureaucrats bitching at Lilith. Apparently she was supposed to have seen this coming and given them some warning to put their paperwork in order. How are they supposed to get any business done with angels waging war downstairs?

Lilith shouts something in a language Crowley hasn't heard in a few thousand years, and Beelzebub flees the stereo system like a shot. He doesn't even bat an eyelash. "Blimey, you'd think it was life or death the way he was talking," he blithely says instead.

She flops down next to him on the couch, petulant and annoyed again. " _Children_ , Crowley. They're just children, screaming for their mother. Most haven't ever seen an angel, never mind _fought_ one. I thought we had an _army_."

"We do," Crowley supposes, curling a strand of her hair around his finger thoughtfully. "But never mind armies. Heaven's full of unimaginative bastards. _We've_ got the market cornered on creative strategy."

She nods (whether or not she's listened is up for debate) and leans into his touch. "Have you ever really seen an angel?" she asks him lightly.

Funny that he knows all of her legends but she doesn't seem to know many of his. There's no question of who the real VIP is here. "Yeah. Showoffs," he says, dismissive.

"It made me wonder what God must be like." Lilith goes still, her eyes gently closed, actually relaxed. "Seeing Him, as He was made to be seen. I thought I would die from His beauty, Crowley."

It gets easier every year to bite his tongue. "Special from the start, you were."

"That's what He said," she says, like he needed confirmation. "He said I was special."

They never talk about this, mostly because Crowley doesn't know what the fuck will come out of his mouth if Lilith starts gushing about Lucifer in front of him, and the prospect of dying by Lilith's hand because he badmouthed the Morningstar who she loves so much more...

Fuck it, he's better than this.

"Do you miss Him?" he asks bluntly.

She doesn't hesitate to answer. "Yes. I haven't seen Him since our daughter was born. That was the last He saw of me, before the cage."

Lilith's hand closes around his, and he does his best not to soften. "Right. The cage." Everyone knows about the cage. It just sits there, at the bottom of Hell, red-hot, shadowed, barely visible, managing to loom despite that geography forces you to look _down_ at it.

"He told me it would happen, Crowley," she says softly. "How it would happen. That Michael would come for Him, with the four riders behind him, and that I would never see Him again."

"Fucking prophecy," he says, unimpressed, but then he realizes exactly what he's heard and decides to pretend he hasn't. "He knew, then."

She opens her eyes and shrugs at him. "It is written."

"So I've heard." Crowley kisses her on the mouth to distract her, and she smirks against his mouth, moving easily to straddle his lap. "Tell me more."

Lilith guides him to unbutton her shirt, and she starts to speak, in that voice, _her_ voice, that human-demon-vessel voice that only she can call up -- that voice that has the power of Hell and emotion of humanity all at once.

"He lied to me. So many lies, Crowley."

"It's what He does," he says, trying to play it cool and genuinely wondering how the fuck he ever managed it with her.

She turns her head when he goes to kiss her, and gives an appreciative murmur when he sinks her back into the couch. "But they weren't lies, that's the strange thing," she goes on, resting her hand on the back of his head. "Just like you. He lied and lied but they were all lies to make me love Him. And I did, and I believed Him. That makes them true. Doesn't it?"

Fuck, Crowley really wishes he could be listening to her, but he's too far gone. He's witnessed witches being burned at the stake, Aztecs sacrificing their own, all in the fervor of religion. It's nothing compared to how desperately he worships at her body now, working steadily to leave her completely bare and take her in, demon and human and sin incarnate.

She smiles down at him. It's still the worst thing he's ever seen, but it's _his_. "Do you love me?" she asks.

His mind is blank. She's right; he always has a lie on the tip of his forked tongue. But not now.

It comes out in a hiss. "Yes."

She yanks him closer, hard, into a frenzied, biting kiss --

Then she abruptly breaks it, along with the power she'd so effortlessly used on him, possibly not even on purpose. Before Crowley can recover and figure out what the hell is going on, she's torn open her own wrist and is impatiently drawing sigils on the ground in her own blood.

"What?" he manages, just before she slams her hand down on the spell and Beelzebub appears in a flash of flame.

Beelzebub looks from a naked and glaring Lilith to Crowley's bloody lip and torn shirt, and doesn't seem to know what to say. Crowley gets some satisfaction from that. "I did not intend to interrupt, mizztrezz," he says hurriedly to Lilith.

"What is it," she snarls, not nearly as amused. "What could POSSIBLY be so important?"

Beelzebub markedly hesitates. "Ah, yezz, well -- "

"Oh, get on with it," Crowley says, because he has the authority and he's damn well going to use it.

"They have Dean Winchester. Heaven hazz Dean Winchester," Beelzebub blurts out.

" _No_ ," Lilith screeches instantly, and just as Beelzebub starts to beg, she blasts him back to Hell and abandons her meatsuit.

Crowley looks from the ruined rug to the dazed and naked twenty-something sitting on his couch with her arm hacked open, and sighs. "Just me then," he concludes, and lights a fag right before the girl starts to scream.

He reaches over and touches her forehead, knocking her out. "Shut it," he advises her, and starts idly thinking of what the blessed host to do now when his cell starts to buzz against the computer desk.

"Anthony J Crowley speaking, how may I help you," he answers flatly, tired of this night already.

"Crowley -- you need to come here, now, we need to talk. They're _back_ , Crowley, and -- "

There's a tinny crash in the background noise of the call. It sounds like Aziraphale, but more like Aziraphale would sound if he were panicking, which is so unlikely that it can't be true.

"Who is this?" he asks.

"THIS IS NOT THE TIME TO FOOL AROUND, CROWLEY," Aziraphale shouts in his ear.

"Oi," Crowley warns, holding the phone away from his ear. "ENOUGH SHOUTING," he returns in kind, and then reasonably returns to normal conversation. "Now what are you on about?"

"The angels are _back_. They have the Vessel. But they're back. Don't you -- look, you need to come here, _now_ , I can't explain this here," Aziraphale says in a tone that Crowley can only accurately describe as forcefully neurotic. " _Please_."

Crowley pauses. The implication of the night's events is starting to sink into his head, and even though it doesn't even seem half over it's already not looking good. "All right," he agrees. "But I have an errand to run first."

"I don't need to hear about your sex life," the angel says acidly. "Now get the sodding hell over here."

"Wow, you really have gone native," Crowley says, amused. Aziraphale hangs up on him. "Never could laugh at himself," he mutters under his breath, and goes to pick up the girl.

* * *

 _September 18, 2008_

Aziraphale isn't at his shop. He's in a flat, a very well protected one at that; Crowley has to step lightly to avoid all of the devil's traps and other occult security measures in place. "I'd never figured you for the paranoid type," he calls into the sitting room, and reappears on the other side of the carpet square with a devil's trap painted underneath.

Then he sees the books, the newspapers, and the notes and pin-covered maps all over the corkboard, and his eyebrows raise. "... But I could be wrong," he concedes.

Aziraphale looks around from his station at the corkboard in annoyance. "I tell you that the host of Heaven's returned to Earth after its siege of Hell and all you've got is pithy comments," he says sharply. "What exactly is it going to take to make you take this seriously?"

"I'm taking it seriously, angel, I'm just not _panicking_." Crowley looks over Aziraphale's shoulder, takes a closer look at the notes he's made in his neat but terse handwriting, and only processes a note about some sort of storm in Chicago before the angel sends him a step back with another glare. " _What_? God, you're _touchy_."

"Of course you're not _panicking_ ," Aziraphale snaps, on edge. "You have Lilith to hide behind, what's there to be afraid of?"

Crowley is frankly unimpressed, but if he wants to play it like that. "Right. Heavenly host sets up camp on Earth, I've got no reason to panic, _oh wait_ , yes, I do," he says acidly. "The more important question is _why should you_?"

Just like that the angel's on the defensive. "Don't be thick, Crowley," he says wearily, and his mouth drops shut before he says anything else, his head tilted as he listens.

After this long, he knows that look. "What? What are they saying?"

"He's alive," Aziraphale says, lightly, gaze still off in the distance as he listens. "Dean Winchester lives again."

"Of course he does. Really, as hunters go you lot could've picked a better one to heroworship," Crowley says. "But we all know Michael's a sucker for a square jaw and _go-getter personality_."

"He wasn't chosen. It is written." Just like that, Aziraphale snaps out of it, troubled, and picks a pin from the box on the table. He deliberately sticks it in the map, near the center of Illinois.

"Yes, I've bloody heard." Crowley's really losing patience with the entire destiny, _prophecy_ thing. "Spare me, I'll be hearing enough about the Winchesters later. What is it I can do for you?"

"Nothing," Aziraphale snaps off, openly bitter and, much to Crowley's surprise, terrified. "That's the problem." He opens up a toolbox (what is Aziraphale doing with an actual _toolbox_?) and pulls out a knife. Then he slices open his wrist, his jaw set in pain, and starts to draw a sigil on the wall in his own blood.

"You aren't seeing this," the angel mentions sharply, and straightens some of the lines before he goes back into the toolbox to pull out gauze and bind up his wrist.

Crowley can't ignore what he's just seen. He stares at the bandage peeking out of Aziraphale's other sleeve, realizes how many changes of clothes he's seen the angel in, the phone, the shop, the utter mundane living of it all, and what was previously a looming hypothetical now might as well be hanging over them in neon lights.

"You're..."

"Human," Aziraphale says flatly. "Yes."

 _But you can't be_ is too cliche, so he manages to keep himself from saying it until he can find something else. "You've lost me," Crowley confesses.

"I was an angel. I'm not anymore." Aziraphale's being terse and obnoxious, which is pretty damn angelic of him in Crowley's experience. "Don't act so surprised, it's been fairly obvious for some time now, even if you were too polite to point it out. For once."

There are at least seven levels on which this is incredibly bad, and the first of them is that Crowley's standing less than thirty feet with an angel-turned-human who knows about Hell's plan to release Lucifer, and odds are fairly good that he sort of has an obligation to kill him. "I thought your power might've been limited, but I didn't think you _could_ \-- well."

"This vessel died about four months ago." Aziraphale looks down at himself, and takes a heavy seat on the couch. "His name was Daniel Lassiter. I told him it would only be a few months at most." He exhales. "I didn't mean to lie."

Crowley is admittedly more than out of his depth in any sort of situation that casts him as confessor, so he just ignores that it's happening at all. "Let's take the ego back a notch," he advises. "The heavenly host is only here to stop the Apocalypse, and from the sounds of it that's going to take up more than enough of their time and energy, so I really doubt they're going to go out of their way to finish _you_ off, especially if you make it difficult for them."

Aziraphale looks stunned. "You aren't listening," he says, as though realizing.

"I am. I'm ignoring it. Humans bore me," Crowley says, ignores the pained sound the angel makes at that, and looks at the map instead. "So, do you mind explaining the Conspiracy Theory decor?" He gestures around the flat.

He unwillingly speaks when Crowley won't stop sending him the same expectant look. "I found their research." He nods to the boxes of books stacked in the corner. "They didn't go to any great effort to hide their tracks, so... I know what they know."

The angel and his books. Honestly. "Whose research on what exactly?"

"Heaven and Hell's research on the seals. Naturally Heaven doesn't do their own research, but I know the networks, of course," Aziraphale says, and averts his gaze to tighten the gauze on his arm. "Hell just left it sit once they were finished."

"You've been researching the seals," Crowley repeats, incredulous. "We only just broke the first seal."

"I told you, _it is written_ ," Aziraphale says, in that insanely annoying reasonable tone of his. "Very few people have bothered to sit down and _read it_ , though."

"Yeah." Crowley considers that, and shrugs. "That's why we keep you around. And while we're on the topic... let's make a deal." The look on the angel's face forces him to rephrase. "An Arrangement?"

"An Arrangement," Aziraphale agrees warily. "I'm listening."

Crowley claps a hand onto Aziraphale's shoulder and puts the other over the gauze-bound cut; once the angel's noticed it's healed, he's smiling like a snake. "You won't regret it."

* * *

 _December 2008_

As it turns out, Crowley's in something of a precarious position again.

Twenty years ago, he'd wanted to prevent the end of the world largely because he'd bollocksed the whole thing up and he was bound to spend the rest of his existence in endless suffering in the fires and torture racks of Hell no matter how it ended. Then, of course, when confronted with the rack he'd deigned to become the King of the Crossroads in return for helping bring on the return of Lucifer.

Now he's back trying to stop the fucking thing again. It's not about humanity, he certainly doesn't like them all that much, or even believe that they don't for the most part deserve to be subjected to Hell, because a large part of them have ensured themselves a spot without even making an explicit reservation with one of his employees. It's really more that he likes the world as it is, full of bastards, angelic, demonic, and human alike.[2]

Really it boils down to the simpler nature of things, as it usually does. He's a demon, after all, and though good has to struggle with a moral paradigm and think all of its decisions through on that basis, evil has to be constantly watching its step so it can reap the best rewards.[3]

What benefit does he get from a world run from an angel, really?

Alliances in Hell are complicated. At this point he couldn't tell you whose side he's really on, not that he actually would if he knew. All he knows is that he would rather not die, and that's inevitable once Lucifer's out. Unless he makes himself useful.[4]

The Arrangement he made with Aziraphale has no collateral. It's based on an expectation of honor and trust, which is the most unnerving thing about it. It's the simplest thing he's ever agreed to.

 _We're going to subvert Lucifer's return and the ensuing Apocalypse by any means necessary._

Normally the context of the words ‘by any means necessary’ in Crowley’s life would be _stay alive by any means necessary_ , but this is an entirely new life philosophy. He would blame the angel for oversimplifying things to the point of absurdity, but the ridiculous thing is that he agrees.

By any means necessary it is.

He has four tailors – one in Madison, one in New York City, another in LA and a last in Mississippi. North, South, East and West, he’s got his meatsuits covered. All of them are equally talented, although LA is by far his favorite. He’s just flown Belling the younger of Belling and Belling to his current house in Phoenix (now that’s what he calls service) because there’s nothing to take your mind off of the sequence of insane events known as existence than the mindless spending of money on things that you want much more than you need.

Belling is measuring his inseam at the point that he’s grown bored of the professional silence. "Have you ever had the misfortune to mix business and pleasure, Mr Belling?" he asks out of nowhere.

The tailor looks up at him, plainly awkward, but goes along like this line of conversation at this point in the process is completely normal. "I’m not sure I understand your meaning, sir," he says.

"Friendship, Mr. Belling. Trust and honor. It has no place in business, don’t you think?"

Belling carries on. "Business is generally an exchange of some variety, money for services or products. It’s important to know the people you’re dealing with are trustworthy, and confidence is wholly necessary, but there is really no need to extend it beyond the conclusion of the deal. We, of course, have an understanding with certain clients, like yourself, Mr. Crowley."

"Yes, the understanding’s where things get messy," Crowley muses. "If it outlasts a deal. If it extends to favoritism."

"In that case I might look into other partners." The tailor straightens and records the measurements fastidiously. "If I understand you correctly. How is your business faring, sir?"

"Flourishing," Crowley says, honestly. "These are very exciting times. Very lucrative."

"Wonderful news, Mr. Crowley," Belling says, and carries on.

A door slams on the other side of the house, and Crowley instantly looks up, paranoid and irritated all at once.

"Hello-o…" Tristane’s croon carries down the corridor.

Crowley tries not to sigh, but then there’s another voice. "Blessed host you’re obnoxious sometimes." Has to be Vivienne. Not all bad.

"My associates," he explains to Belling, and cannot really mask his annoyance. This is really not the time. "My apologies."

"I’ll gladly accept both, sir," Belling says easily.

"Good man." Crowley looks at the pair of demons as they enter his study. "This had better be good."

Vivienne looks good, clothed in a fine black girl with a devastatingly wonderful body. Tristane’s too young to pass off as anything but a case of nepotism.[5] "I wish you two were half as skilled at your jobs as you are at knowing the exact most inconvenient time to bother me," Crowley says plainly.

"I have to say I wasn’t expecting this," Vivienne says to Tristane, bemused, then adds to Crowley, "Another suit? Really?"

"The heart wants what the heart wants," he says, and sends Belling a long-suffering look as the tailor glances up at him.

"And your heart… wants suits," Tristane concludes.

"When you grow up you may find finery’s worth the effort for the comfort." Crowley eyes them. "So. What is it this time? Passed my sales goals? Are we past 36? Or are you here to raid my liquor?"

"Maybe, but – " Tristane edges forward. "Listen, Crowley, we’ve got a – "

Vivienne cuts him off with a hand on his shoulder, and lightly moves him aside. Crowley appraises her; she’s the best of his girls and she’s never been this eager. This should be good. "I suppose the reason no one’s been told about the big deal is because you’re doing it," she says.

"‘The big deal’," Crowley repeats, and sends her a skeptical look. "You could be more specific."

"What about the help here?" Tristane points out, with a nod to the tailor.

Idiots. Hell is full of idiots. "How much longer, Mr. Belling?"

"No more than five, sir."

"We can entertain ourselves," Vivienne decides, and saunters back. "Besides, you’re likely to just tell us to mind our own business so we might as well just go ahead and do that."

"Your business is by definition my business so you can bloody wait," Crowley says, unmoved.

Tristane seems ready to go, but Vivienne lingers. "We found another seal," she says. "One that only our company is suited to handle. But it’s big. Big enough for you, or Lilith. We – "

"That’s enough." It’s incredibly off-putting that they know something he doesn’t, but this is why he keeps them on their toes. If they’re paranoid, they won’t notice that he’s paranoid. "Wait on the patio, will you? We can talk shop once Mr. Belling’s done his work."

Vivienne instantly grabs Tristane’s hand as his mouth opens to object, and hauls him out. Crowley looks to Belling’s placid face.

"Amateurs," he says.

"Yes, sir," Belling confirms mildly.

He slips Belling a sizable tip to ensure what he’ll remember about the trip to Phoenix, and sends him off without another word. The suit is going to be amazing; he tries not to think about the fact that he might not last long enough to wear it.

Much to his surprise, when he reaches the patio, Vivienne and Tristane are tangled in what might be called a passionate embrace by predatory animals. It sets his teeth on edge. "Entertaining yourselves," he says, "no kidding."

Vivienne runs her fingers into a satisfied Tristane’s hair as she pulls back, and adds to Crowley as though she didn’t just have her tongue down Tristane’s currently quite underage throat, "That was ten minutes."

"We can keep waiting," Tristane volunteers. He hasn’t bothered to move his hands from her ass yet.

"Keep it zipped," Crowley says, and sits across from them. Vivienne stays in Tristane’s lap, even now. It doesn’t bother him, unprofessional as it might be. They’re demons, after all.[6] "You had something to ask me."

Tristane speaks up before Vivienne can get a word in. "You’ll be breaking that seal, won’t you?"

"Which seal?" Crowley asks, nonplussed.

"Don’t play stupid," Vivienne interjects, and reaches across the table to touch his forehead.

 _And so it is written that an angel will make covenant with Hell._

He recoils in spite of himself, as it sinks in. "That seal," he says. "Right." He looks at her, in slight amazement. "Hell Below, you are clever."

Vivienne's expression doesn't change.[7] "So you’re going to do it," she says casually.

"I knew it," Tristane snaps.[8] "I just knew it. Of course, we all know why – "

Crowley raises his hand to stop him talking. "Lilith doesn’t know. I found it, I figured I might as well."

"Because you know the angel," Tristane figures.

It takes Crowley a second to form an appropriately unconcerned response, which is good because Vivienne cuts in. " _Tristane_ – "

"What?" Tristane shrugs. "Everyone knows. We didn’t know angels _could_ make deals, but we found one, anyway. The one you dated in the ’80s, Crowley."

Crowley almost starts with _we weren’t dating_ but it sounds a little defensive. "Do you two really think you could sell to an angel? Have you ever _seen_ one, nevertheless spoken to one? Or _fought_ one? He’s likely to kill you."

"Maybe him," Vivienne says lightly, patting Tristane’s cheek. "Not me."

"Hey," Tristane protests, actually offended.

She’s ignoring him now. Her eyes are on Crowley, bright and wicked and just the way he likes his girls. "I found him," she says smoothly. "I can take you to him."

Tristane throws his hands up. "Viv – "

"Enough," Vivienne retorts, and presses his hands to the arms of the chair, effortlessly sealing him there. She smirks at the cool look he gives her. "Stay."

Crowley could only like her better if she’d gagged him at this point. "As you were saying?" he prompts her.

"We were going to do this together," Tristane snaps at Vivienne.

"You wanted to make the deal, I did all the work." Cool as anything, Vivienne slides out of his lap and sits in the chair next to Crowley as though Tristane isn’t there at all. "Crowley," she starts, and takes one of his hands. " _Please_."

She’s got that lean, hungry look in her eye, and that means only one thing. He’s got no choice. He snaps his fingers to release Tristane from Vivienne’s bonds. "You can leave."

"You _bastard_ ," Tristane realizes.

"Yeah," Crowley says. "What are you, new?"

"There’s a contract up anyway," Tristane says acidly. "Have fun." He vanishes with a huff.

Vivenne just eyes him with more satisfaction than anything else, and releases his hand.[9] "Looks like business is good."

"Business is always good," Crowley concedes, then admits, "but it’s never been better."

"You know what I think?" She doesn’t wait for a snarky response. "I think that’s part of the plan. Hell on Earth starts with the little bit of Hell in every human being. Even if we don’t get them, but especially if we do."

Always interesting to hear what the underlings think the master plan is. "What do you mean?"

"I mean that when it comes to Hell, humanity’s a self-propelling machine." Vivienne crosses her legs and leans back in the chair. "They hurt each other. The victim goes on to hurt others. Sin is a disease, Crowley, and _we_ guarantee it won’t die out. We reward the worst, and that just convince the rest that evil acts can’t be all bad. If big terrible bankers can destroy the economy and get away with golden parachutes, surely a little embezzling here or there isn’t all bad."

Hell is full of idiots, but there’s a scale, and she’s on the right end of it. "You, my dear, are damn keen."

She smiles. "Mark my words, though. We’re going to start it but they’re going to end it. Happily. They’ll welcome Hell on Earth."

"And why shouldn’t they," he says dryly.

They’re off-topic, but he’s comfortable biding his time. She looks thoughtful, so he lets her go on. "What happens when he finishes this, do you think?"

He has a few ideas. None of them end well for anybody. "Ah, it’s… hard to say."

"But Crowley, you can say anything you want."

He snorts at that, and she smirks, nudging her foot against his idly. "I want Lucifer back," she muses. "I want to see Hell on Earth, because I want to see these little insects crawl and beg and realize that their god and their leaders and even we aren’t going to save their asses and give them the excuses and hope they so desperately crave."

Crowley won’t pretend he hasn’t thought it before. The fact is, they deserve it, more than most of the original demons ever did. "Like I said," he says lightly, "keen."

She eyes him as he stands and looks thoughtfully to the house. "More comfortable places to have a chat," he says in explanation, and leads her back inside, fixing them both a drink as casually as anything. "So, about the seal."

"Finally a seal only one of us can break." Vivienne stretches out on the couch with some satisfaction. "I always feel like we get shafted in the great plans. They’re looking for _soldiers_."

"If you want to go enlist, feel free," Crowley says mildly.

She laughs. "You’d never let me, I’m too good."

"That’s right." He serves up her drink and takes a seat when she moves her legs, doing his best not to smirk as she simply places them back, in his lap. "You came here to sell to me." He offers the drink to her. "Go on. Sell."

Vivienne drinks, sets the glass aside, and contemplates his hand on her knee with a smirk. "It’s ours, Crowley," she says sleekly. "You and me. It’s Lilith’s war, Lucifer’s victory, and you’re right, we’re just salesman. But for once? I’d like to give these bastards what they deserve myself."

She’s young, but in a thousand years or more that tart hatred of hers, the disdainful amusement, the power she greedily cultivates, it’ll start to taste like Lilith’s.

Crowley drinks, and then he looks thoughtful, even as she draws closer to him, curious and anxious and all those little flaws she’ll need to burn away before she’s half as good as him.

"Sold," he says, and kisses her.

* * *

 _January 2009_

If Crowley were anyone else, he would now take this narrative moment to complain about how very full of shit his life is on a daily basis. But he's got his dignity, he's what you'd call a noble demon[10] or at least a man of class. Men of class don't talk about how fantastically shitty their lives are; instead, they buy expensive things to pretty up the shit they deal with every day.

As it is, Hell's earthbound contingent is a fucking mess these days. They're all mad for the blessed seals. Kill this, blind that, hop on one foot and sing a song, they might even drink holy water if it was prefaced with a _thus it is written_. Lilith won't answer him even when he contacts her over what he's starting to mentally call Hell FM, Mariel's off the job because she was either stupid or insane enough to poke her thick bloody skull into a garrison's nest in an attempt to break the seal, and Vivienne's almost at Lilith-level mania over trying to find Aziraphale.

Crowley really shouldn't find it amusing at all that Aziraphale is _this good_ at evading capture, but he's a man of class and it takes style for an angel-turned-human to pull spellwork like this.

Of course, he hides his amusement when Vivienne shows up for the sixth time in two weeks, fuming. "It _said_ he was in Cincinnati," she says, immediately on the defensive.

"Is he?" he returns.

She gives him that look like she wants to rip his head off and play football with it just to make her irritation perfectly clear. "What do you think?"

He glances away. "I think you're losing your touch, pet."

That insult stings, and he has to hide his satisfaction at her weakness. To think he's been at all concerned about her potential to cause trouble. "For the King of the Crossroads you're not much help," she retorts.

"You want the credit? You do the legwork." Crowley flicks on the radio with a dismissive wave of his hand.[11] "You think I got this crown by sitting on my arse asking for favors and help?"

Vivienne leans over the table he's sitting at and smacks the surface in front of him. "I _think_ you got it by sleeping with the Queen," she hisses.

He could hurt her for such insolence, but he's not interested in that today. Hellbitches always pace, howl and bite when restless. "If that was all it took to get a promotion, there'd be far more regicide," he dismisses.

She flicks a piece of hair out of his face, irritated but still affectionate. Good. "You're missing the point."

"Stop complaining," he decides to advise, at long last. "Have I ever done you wrong? Everything will work out nice and neat and in your favor. Unless you keep on bitching, then I'll cut you out of the deal and do it myself."

Vivienne softens. "Crowley. Please."

Typical. Crowley cracks a smile. "That's what I thought."

She relaxes, just barely, and nods as he pours her a glass of wine. "Tris thinks you're going to take the credit. Make us do the work, then not say a word to Lilith about who clipped the angel's wings for you."

"Don't you trust me?" he asks rhetorically, and smirks at her unamused look. "Lilith doesn't _expect_ me to participate. She doesn't need an excuse to compliment my work ethic, either. Do I need the boost? No, but you do. Do you think you've made anything resembling a mark in your time in my service?"

"Do you ever stop talking?" Vivienne retorts, not unkindly. "Anyway, we're just going to have to run this sanctimonious freak ragged. I have Tristane running a second spell now."

"You pulled him into this," Crowley half-asks her, skeptical.

She shrugs. "Mariel made a good case for breaking seals over making deals. What can I say?"

Blessed host. All he needs is for his entire roster to go chasing after Aziraphale. "Exactly how many people have you told?"

"Does it matter?" she shoots back.

His eyes flash and she flinches back in her seat, unable to stop the meatsuit from reacting. "Are you mouthing off to me?" It comes out in a hiss.

"No," Vivienne says instantly. "Not at all, Crowley."

"How many know?"

"Just the three of us. Four," she corrects abruptly. "Four. That's it."

This is all such a blessed mess and he's never enjoyed playing it by ear. "I have business to do. Come see me once you have results."

Vivienne raises her eyebrows at Crowley, then gestures with her head behind him. Crowley glances back, through the patio door, and rolls his eyes at Tristane's cheerful wave. How _timely_. "In here," he mouths, waving him in.

"Prepare yourselves," Tristane says in a contrarily sober tone upon setting foot in the living room, "'cause you're gonna need to be ready to love me. Just wait," he interrupts himself at the incredulous look mirrored on both the other demons' faces, "you're gonna love this."

"I would love it if you would say what you had to say and then stopped talking," Crowley concedes.

As if struck by something, Vivienne suddenly sits up ram-rod straight. "Did it _work_?"

"It worked, I didn't have holy fire or anything but the spell summoned him into the circle and you won't believe this, you really won't believe this -- he just hopped in the fucking car," Tristane babbles. "He hasn't put up a fight at all -- "

Crowley is having a hell of a time hiding his amusement, so he manages to miss Vivienne's horror until she snaps, "So you brought him here? To _Crowley_? You idiot!"

"What? He wanted to see Crowley!" Tristane protests.

"Likely to _kill him_!"

Well, this is all bound to turn out quite interesting. For once Crowley's fear of death is drowned out by his interest in the turn of events -- mostly because for once he has an idea. "Stop bickering. You -- with me," he adds to Tristane. "Viv, pet, there's holy oil in the closet, draw us a circle. And don't mess the carpet."

Vivienne stares at him, aghast. "But -- Crowley -- "

He raises an eyebrow at her. "Now," he says archly, and grabs the stunned witch by the shoulder to haul him along. "I'll undo the Enochian warding, you bring him in, if I don't come back within ten minutes soak the blessed bastard in holy oil and torch him and the whole house. I haven't been in angelic reach for twenty years and with good reason -- _walk faster_!"

Tristane stumbles over a pavement slab as they hurry down the walk. "I don't understand," he starts to confess.

"Do you ever," Crowley asks rhetorically without missing a beat, and shoves him towards the car once it's in sight. He doesn't allow himself to catch Aziraphale's steady gaze on him as he passes through the gate, and takes out a knife to scratch a line in the Enochian warding. The sigils drain of the power, and he watches the car pull into the driveway.

He immediately mends the sigil and vanishes to his study, poring over papers and weapons and everything he can think of in the instant he has to form a real and coherent plan from nothing. The scent of holy fire fills the corridor as he appears downstairs, and saunters towards the ethereal glow centered in the bedroom.

There’s Aziraphale in a wide circle of holy fire, seated in a chair like the lamb waiting for slaughter. Lovely. "Really?" he asks Vivienne, ignoring the angel for the moment. "I told you to mind the carpet."

She shrugs, and with a smooth motion pulls open a drawer to send a loving glance at the collection of knives there. "It's where you keep these," she reminds him.

"How do you know that?" Tristane asks warily.

The last thing Crowley expects is for Aziraphale to interrupt, but he does. "I imagine he's had sexual intercourse with her here a number of times and the knives were put to imaginative use."

"You have no idea," Vivienne informs the angel, offhand. "Well, by the end of this you will, but -- "

"Do they actually think they can kill me?" Aziraphale asks Crowley, ignoring the younger demons. "Are these really your best? How dreadful. I don't remember you ever being this incompetent."

"Whoa, watch it," Tristane warns, and picks up a knife with a serrated edge. "Don't forget who found you, genius."

"Ah, let me clear this up for you. I _let you_ find me," Aziraphale explains slowly to the witch. "Do you think I haven't noticed you looking? A summons is only that, a summons. I chose to answer. I'm sorry to have given you the impression that you accomplished something."

"I hate angels," Vivienne says under her breath.

"Rather the point," Crowley answers, and gestures to Tristane for the knife. "Angel," he greets Aziraphale, "we need to talk."

"Yes, that's why I'm here," Aziraphale says, with that angelic tone of self-importance and arrogance.[12] "There is really no need for holy fire, I have hopes there will be no need for violence."

Crowley considers the knife, its edge, the shining dull mirror of the flat, and appears on the other side of the holy fire. The fire reflects in the angel's eyes, all mischief and _your turn_. "I don't know how to kill an angel but I have a few ideas," he says reflectively, "and I'm eager to learn. I want intel."

The angel sends a disinterested look at the knife. "I won't be able to give you any information of any worth. This vessel is of no consequence."

"Cut him up, Crowley," Tristane presses.

Vivienne shoves him. "Why did you come here, Aziraphale?"

"And I trust you'll be honest," Crowley says, acidly charming, with the knife to his jugular.

Aziraphale looks up at him, the satisfaction shining past the fear. "I came here to tell you there's no point in searching myself or any other angels out. Break all the seals you want. The plan is just, and Heaven has no intent to stop it."

It's brilliant. It's _brilliant_ , it's just smug enough and even he believes Aziraphale for a moment. "He's bluffing," Crowley tells the others without looking away.

Tristane sounds spooked, though. "Why the _hell_ would he bluff?"

"Heaven realizes what they're up against," Vivienne says, and within an instant he feels her breath against his neck and her body against his back. Her hand curls around his and she guides the knife along the thrum of Aziraphale's carotid. "So let's show them."

"It's just a vessel," Crowley reminds her, keeping his voice low.

"Free Lucifer. Do it. Michael will win us the war," Aziraphale swears.

Crowley feels like slitting open his throat might be worth shutting him up. "You realize we've got you where we want you, birdie? That's why you're playing a game."

"I'm not telling you anything you haven't already suspected."

"Viv," Tristane snaps, out of nowhere. "We need to talk."

"Not now, Tris." Vivienne swiftly guides the knife across the underside of Aziraphale's chin, and blood drips onto the angel's trousers and folded hands. He doesn't react.[13] "I think we should set this vessel on fire and see how the angel likes it."

"Wait, wait wait, I thought there was a plan here," Tristane says, and snaps his fingers at them from the other side of the holy fire to get some attention. " _Hey_! Crowley, are you awake in there?"

"Throw a 'sir' in there and I might listen," Crowley retorts, and exchanges a look with Aziraphale. "No point in showing our hand, though I know that _is_ a whore's instinct."

"I'd supposed him a witch, always good to know my instincts are on the money," Aziraphale says lightly.

"Shut up," Tristane says with nothing short of disgust.

"You want us to break seals?" Vivienne steals the knife from Crowley's loose grip and crosses to Aziraphale's other side, abandoning her flirtation for now. "Then help us."

Tristane laughs, and reappears behind the angel, a knife appearing in his hand as well. "Let's make a deal," he crows, pressing the flat of the blade to the angel's face.

"I don't like your underlings," Aziraphale tells Crowley openly.

"Neither do I," Crowley answers without missing a beat, "but he's got the gist of it. ' _And so it is written that an angel will make covenant with Hell_.' What do you make of that, angel?"

Horror dawns on Aziraphale's face. "Ooh, we hit a nerve," Vivienne croons.

"Make a deal or you'll be the next Human Torch," Tristane stage-whispers to Aziraphale.

Crowley wishes the kids didn't have such a penchant for the dramatic. "And watch your angelic tongue or we may cut it out. He gets the point," he adds to his employees. "Now can we get to it?"

"What I don't get," Tristane says conspiratorially to the angel, his arm slung around Aziraphale's shoulders like an old friend, "is why you came here at all. I summoned you and you showed up all 'Let's go.' What could you possibly gain?"

"They know where I am," Crowley lies fluently. "But it doesn’t matter, I can abandon this house. Torch the place once we're finished, et cetera, collect the insurance. Lovely system, that."

Vivienne now toys with Aziraphale's hair. "But Crowley," she muses, "if they want us to break Lucifer out, there's no point in killing you, you're helping."

"Are you stupid? It's not about _me_ ," Crowley retorts.

"It's about Lilith," Aziraphale finishes the thought, coolly.

With a flick of Vivienne's knife there's a gash in Aziraphale's cheek and Crowley can see Tristane's eyes move to the still-unhealed cut under his chin.[14] "What about Lilith," Crowley snaps at Aziraphale.

Aziraphale shrugs. "Nothing I'll tell you."

"Why aren't you healing, angel?" Tristane interrupts.

"Why are you talking?" Crowley asks in much the same tone.

"Because he's not healing." Tristane points to the cut. "Either of 'em. The vessel should heal. They heal, it's what they do, right?"

Crowley rolls his eyes and throws Tristane to the floor with a gesture of his hand, pins him there with effortless magic. "What do you know about angels?" he asks loudly.

"Enough," Tristane counters. "Now come on, let me go!"

His meatsuit's hair is close to the holy fire. Oh, _precious_. Crowley can't help but smile. "No. Going to apologize?"

"Fuck off, Crowley -- "

"Right," Crowley says evenly, "back to business, shall we?"

"Angels are indestructible and you're a wilting flower," Vivienne says, softly dangerous, her eyes flickering red. "I don't think you're an angel at all."

"That's my girl -- Viv, talk to me," Tristane calls over to her desperately.

"He's a human, baby," she calls back, and puts her hands on Aziraphale's knees as she looks up at him. "Isn't an angel in there. Just a dime-store soul. We've been _had_."

Tristane sends a wild look at Crowley, who can't be bothered to even begin to take this seriously. "How in the fuck -- "

"You two are so endlessly stupid, honestly," Crowley sighs, and puts a hand on Vivienne's head, making a fist in her hair and pulling her gaze up to his pointedly. "They pulled the plug on him. We can still make a deal."

"You knew," Vivienne says, soft and low.

She’s guessing, but it’s a good guess. Crowley does his best not to quirk too obvious an eyebrow. "Watch your tongue," he warns once again.

Vivienne looks to Aziraphale and so does Crowley and that's the instant they both see it in his face. _Dammit_! "He knew all along! Crowley, what are you even playing at?"

Aziraphale exhales involuntarily and straightens as Crowley gives him a deeply irritated look, and Vivienne seizes him by the shirt. "Crowley, don't do something -- "

He's already reached into the back of his trousers and pulled out the Colt. Before Vivienne's knife reaches Aziraphale's chest, he's fired it into the back of her head.

"... stupid," Aziraphale finishes, staring down into the shattered skull now in his lap.

"What the -- what in the FUCKING FUCK," Tristane manages. "The Colt's supposed to be fucking -- WHY DID YOU KILL HER?"

Crowley spares him a glance. "I never liked you," he mentions, and blows Tristane away.

Aziraphale is tensed and has the worst sort of judgmental, moralistic asshole expression on his face once Crowley looks back to him. "You -- " he finds his tongue. "Why in the seven hells did you do that?"

"Once they figured out that I knew you were human but I didn't mention it, they'd start questioning everything else about why you came along, and I'd be knee-deep in trouble instead of bone fragments," Crowley says, and brushes brain tissue off of his shirt. "I'm a little surprised you can still reply to summons."

"That's what you take away from all this?" Aziraphale demands, and shoves Vivienne's body away hurriedly, so he can stand. It lands in the path of the holy fire and breaks the circle. "You -- Crowley, you just killed two of your own!"

"How many of your own would you kill to keep yourself alive?" Crowley doesn't bother waiting for a reply. "That's all you've got to say? Good, you can go home."

"What are you talking about, I can't go -- " The angel suddenly freezes. " _Crowley_ ," he starts, a snap to his voice.

He sighs and takes a seat backwards in the chair, nudging Vivienne's body aside unabashedly. "I wondered when you'd get to that bit, let's get it over with. Go on, yell," he instructs Aziraphale.

"No! No talking down to me!" Aziraphale's voice rises, and the frustration of not having the power to do _anything_ besides talk and shove and all the physical nonsense seems to be driving him completely insane. "You have the Colt! You've had the Colt for nearly a year and I had to find out from a _prophet_! You should have given that to the Winchesters _ages_ ago, do you know how much good they would have done? There would be no war at all -- stop that!"

Crowley lowers his hand and stops the _talk talk talk, blah blah blah_ motion he was doing for his own entertainment. "Go on," he encourages.

Aziraphale is nearly in hysterics, and Crowley should probably be taking this seriously, but it's hard to. "You -- you have Lilith in one back pocket and the Colt in the other and it never occurred to you to kill her?"

Wait. Now he's listening. "Are you hearing yourself?" Crowley asks skeptically.

"Are you seeing yourself?" Aziraphale retorts nastily.

Crowley presses a hand to his forehead. "I don't even want to ask. In case you were wondering, yes, these sort of dramatics are _entirely_ why I didn't call you back -- "

"No, no, I was calling you about something else entirely, that's the absolute worst part," the angel rants. "Something for your own damned sake, but you seem to know already and that makes _this_ just _so much worse_." He backs off, nearly trips over Vivienne's body and out of the holy fire. "You -- you are a _snake_ , a complete _snake_."

"Yes," Crowley answers, blandly as he dares. "What was your news? Just so I'm aware."

Aziraphale seems to be considering an escape plan, but Crowley can almost see the wheels turning -- he's barred inside by the Enochian sigils. "I found the last seal," he says finally, almost forcing it out.

"The last seal. Let me guess," Crowley muses. "Something dramatic, something that would really piss Lucifer off to have to do."

Aziraphale doesn't seem to want to look at him, and just wipes blood from his chin. "Lilith has to die."

There's a pause when Crowley stops cold and tries to think of something pithy to say through the shock. "Yes, that would do it," he comes up with, at long last.

"It's true. Lilith's death is the last seal." The angel's in his bibliophile tone now, happy enough to lecture away. "65 seals all broken, then she has to die. Only then." He's watching Crowley, and it's the best Crowley can do not to react at all. "She can't be the 64th or the 67th seal -- she has to be the 66th. _Everything_ hinges on Lilith. And you know I mean _everything_."

For all the blessed fucking angels in Heaven, Aziraphale might be trapped here but Crowley's trapped here with him and that's just as bad. "Be less subtle, I don't seem to be catching your point."

Aziraphale looks at the Colt, still at the ready in Crowley's hands, and his tone softens. "You have the means, the access, and the motive. You can save the world. Or let them burn it down."

All Crowley can do is stare. "I hope you realize how insane you sound."

"We're only 36 seals in. Make Lilith the 37th," Aziraphale says, abruptly direct and eager. "You have one of the only things that can kill her and she trusts you. Why shouldn't you? Crowley, she's trying to bring back the Morningstar, you know what he'll do -- "

He can't listen to this. "Or you could be telling me to do this so I kill her and she isn't there to rally the rabble. The rabble is rallied, darling, there's no undoing that! The world's going to Hell no matter what I do -- "

"' _And it is written that the first demon shall be the last seal_ ,'" the angel says, firm and sad and so perfectly human. The blessed bastard.

Crowley pulls a pack of fags from his blood-spattered jacket and lights one with the tip of his finger, taking an idle drag while he thinks. "It's not meant to be me," he points out. "Talk about ineffable."

"Crowley," Aziraphale starts, annoyed.

He waves the angel off, dismissive. "The prophet saw me _and_ Bela Talbot, you think it's because I did the Winchesters' job for them? This isn't the epic of Anthony J. Crowley, these are the Winchester Gospels!"

"You hate prophecy," the angel points out.

"And I avoid it, or I void it, where I can. This? Not one of those cases. Too big for a small fish like me."

"Now you're a small fish? I thought you were King of the Crossroads," Aziraphale answers drolly.

Crowley throws his hands up. "You think there's a prophet watching every move and shag the Winchesters make because, what, they look like fugitives from a Springsteen-inspired male modeling shoot? I'm just paying attention, angel."

"You don't _want_ to kill Lilith. Admit it," Aziraphale says bluntly, which is shocking enough to leave him speechless, except that the angel isn't finished. "Only you would be selfish enough to let the world burn for the sake of a shag."

Crowley's standing before he realizes it, and shoves the chair to the ground. "I don't have to listen to this in my own house," he decides, and steps over Vivienne and out of the holy fire, away from Aziraphale. "I saved your life and this is what you drop in my lap? I killed two of my own for you!"

"You killed two of your own to save your own hide, don't even start," Aziraphale says in blatant disgust.

"I didn't plan this! They found that seal themselves, they told _me_ about it, that witch summoned your pert little arse and I had to clean up _your_ mess because there's only one angel I know of that could sell his own soul," Crowley finishes, relishing his own chance at a rant, "so _shut bloody well up_ , all right?"

Aziraphale glares at him. "What did you say about my arse?" he demands.

Crowley raises his eyebrows. "That's what you took away from that?"

The angel goes a bit red and it's all Crowley can do to not be a little smug at that. "What seal?" Aziraphale presses, still indignant.

"Angel making covenant with Hell, all that," he says flippantly. "Are you in?"

The very idea shocks the angel silent for a moment. "I am not breaking a seal," he says severely.

"Are you ready to die, then?"

There's a moment where Aziraphale's face is completely glass, where he knows what he should say, but he doesn't. "Crowley," he starts.

"I'm not particularly keen to break a seal either," Crowley says, "so you know. That's incidental."

" _Incidental_? We agreed to stop the Apocalypse, and you want me to make a deal with you, with Hell, and break a seal in the process, just to save myself from a hypothetical horde of demons out to kill me?"

He clears his throat delicately. "They're not hypothetical, you saw what happened to Ananchel, didn't you? Oh, and the traitor Ruby, she spent eight hours on Alistair's rack, but I suppose you'd be happy to suffer real torture, you big tough angel, you."

" _Crowley_ \-- "

"It'd be worse with you, anyway. You've crossed _everyone_. And if Hell can find you -- "

"Heaven can," Aziraphale concludes, winded.

"You have a chance to hide yourself from everyone. No more spells, no more running," Crowley says, to the point. "I'm the only demon who won't write an 'except on Sundays' clause into whatever deal you choose, so this is a golden opportunity. Skirt death, Aziraphale, or face him, those are your options, because you're far more mortal than most."

Aziraphale absorbs that, and sits absently on the bed. "My word," he says, once Crowley's joined him there. "What's the world come to when you're tempting _me_?"

Crowley pats his shoulder, and can't help a smirk at the way he flinches. "Your immortal soul, for the chance to be invisible to the forces of Heaven and Hell? That's not temptation, angel, that's _sense_."

"So if I die -- " Aziraphale turns to look him in the face.

What's strange -- what has been strange, and what continues to be strange -- is how Aziraphale's vessel is _his_ now. He's always seemed incidentally physical, as though affecting an accent he could drop at any moment. Now he's... still an angel, there's still vestiges of it here and there, but Vivienne was right. He moves, thinks, bleeds like a human, and a soul's burning through his eyes every second of the way.

"Straight to Hell, do not pass GO, do not collect 200 dollars." He fakes his way through the jokes, the tone, and puts a hand to Aziraphale's cheek to heal the wound there, smoothing a thumb against it before he cups his chin and heals him there. The angel hasn't looked away. "Try not to piss off humanity as well."

Aziraphale is too human, too real, too vulnerable and open here, and it's making him uncomfortable. "Was this your plan all along, Crowley?" he asks, still leaning into his touch.

"You're asking me to be honest," Crowley points out dryly.

"Yes," the angel says, unabashed.

Well. "I'm a demon. I have my pride."

"I'm well aware."

Standoffs. He hates standoffs. "Yes. Fine. I had no plan to bring you here to break a seal for my own reasons, and I am being astoundingly honest at the moment. I should have thought the Colt and the lies and the murders might have proved I'm not on Team Lucifer, but if you need a written affidavit -- "

"Stop it, Crowley." Aziraphale seems genuinely shaken, to the core.[15] "All the forces of Heaven and Hell, it's..." Just the choice has aged him ten years -- a process he's seen a thousand times, a thousand times a thousand, but it's never been quite so pointed as with an angel gone mortal. "All of them. Free of this -- no more running or ridiculous rituals every _single_ day -- "

"Also cuts down on the paranoia," Crowley feels worth mentioning.

"This deal would include you," Aziraphale blurts out in the silence, and then adds quickly, "I would be invisible to you as well. Yes?"

Oh, so he noticed. "Yes. Might be King of the Crossroads, but others _will_ see this contract, including Lilith. I can't exactly write myself in as an exception and get away with claiming this as a bad deed on Hell's behalf, can I?"

He moves closer to Crowley, and takes his hand. "Then don't. File the contract, kill Lilith, end this, Crowley, please, this could be _over_."

"That's not how this works," he insists.[16] "Angel, I'm doing what I can -- "

"You'd rather stay with her. She's going to die," Aziraphale enunciates, and presses on past the flat, unamused glare Crowley sends him at the condescension. "They're going to kill her, even if you don't, and her death springs the cage. You can't save her, so -- so save the world!"

Crowley sends him a weary look. "You're proposing the noble solution that we trot off into the sunset and this will all go away if I succeed in blowing away the Queen of Hell with this thing." He takes up the Colt and waves it demonstratively. "Guess what? She's not afraid of it. She only wants it away from the Winchesters. She wouldn't care if I had it, and I doubt it'd kill her. Your idea's romantic and all but I'm not booking a B&B any time soon. If you're hidden, someone needs to be keeping track of this, don't you think?"

Aziraphale doesn't seem to enjoy being mocked. Go figure. "I can look after the Apocalypse while I'm hidden."

"I mean the _Colt_. The prophet specifically noted _me_ as the bearer of the Colt, means I'm likely to have someone knocking down my door for it. Most likely the Winchesters. I'll have to be available, won't I?"

"You're making excuses," the angel says sharply.

"But I'm not wrong," Crowley answers. "Also, you're sulking."

"And they're still excuses."

"You are... _so_ human."

Aziraphale makes an exasperated sound and kisses him on the mouth. This is not exactly a surprise in theory, but it's still unexpected. He's very human, very warm and physical and present, moreso than any meatsuit-wearing demon he's fucked in the last few centuries.

It's a damn good kiss. Talk about temptation.

"You like the new body, I take it," he says, once the angel breaks away, almost guiltily. "So do I, it's very... Hugh Dancy? I thought I'd aim pretty -- "

"You've always talked too much." Aziraphale is still very close. "And yes, I like the body."

"Always liked yours."

"I noticed. Pert? Really?"

Crowley is far too up for this right now -- damn, damn the time, damn the Apocalypse -- but there are bodies on his floor and the Queen of Hell knows where he lives. "Is this the time, angel?"

"Help me finish this and I'll do your deal," the angel says, patiently, almost absolving. "Give them the gun. We haven't got this far to just stand by and watch."

He hates how he feels now -- guilty, exposed, obvious and too many blessed things, Heaven above -- so he slides a hand between the angel's legs and his mouth against his neck. "Do you know what you want?" he murmurs.

"Yes," Aziraphale answers, clearly, without hesitation.

The contract is simple, clear, no complications, no clauses, it takes him only an instant to create, far shorter than the kiss. It's Aziraphale who initiates, desperate more for the means than the end, and the link is made, the contract signed, the magic bound. The angel is breathless and guilty once he pulls away, and Crowley stays close, doesn't let him second-guess.

"Ten years," he says, quiet and light. "No one finds you. Not me -- not anyone. No summons, nothing. You can find me, but I don't recommend it. They'll be looking for that. This is it for us, angel, I'm in deep trouble now."

"Deep cover," Aziraphale corrects in soft jest, and closes his eyes tightly. "You'll give it back."

Crowley hates this, he hates it. "Do you trust me," he forces out, between his teeth.

"Yes," the angel immediately whispers.

"Then you know the answer to that."

Aziraphale exhales, and touches Crowley's face, desperate for touch and comfort, so human. "This isn't my body, I don't understand how I could sell..."

"It's your body now. Trust me, I can tell," Crowley says, and grazes his hand up the inseam of the angel's business trousers. "All too physical, pet -- "

" _Crowley_ \-- "

"Oh, so sorry," he murmurs, barely contrite, and smirks. " _Angel_."

Temptation's like wine -- it gets better with age, and there isn't much temptation more aged than something as dirty and wrong as this, angel and demon fucking in the midst of Apocalypse. It intoxicates and hangs heavy in the air, enough for them to forget the bodies on the floor, the blood of innocent meatsuits on their clothing and the Colt resting on the nightstand as Crowley makes him bloody beg for every inch of it.

It's a loss, with Hell to pay. But right now, oh, it feels like victory.

* * *

 _May 2009_

All Crowley has left of Aziraphale is his parting gift: a checklist. There are over three-hundred seals, so it's said, but the angel dug up as many as he could find and put them on a checklist. The better to keep track of the Apocalypse with, he has to suppose, but at base it's completely absurd. A checklist of celestial proportions -- a checklist that could end the world. Horrible acts perpetrated by agents of Hell with a little tickybox next to them.

Aziraphale is better at keeping track of human news than Crowley is, always has been, but being King of the Crossroads has its benefits. Seals are breaking faster than Lucifer could have hoped, and demons are more than happy to crow in passing about them. Despite that orderliness is next to godliness, and the sentimentality of it all, he dutifully notes every last seal upon its breaking.

This time it really feels like the world is ending. Last time was a close shave, that edge of terror and near-death that reminds you that you're alive. A trial run, maybe. This feels more like the life-flashes-in-front-of-you, actually-going-to-die-this-time part, like the real thing.

Practice runs don't include real power, real deaths or real, inescapable consequences.

Sometimes it flashes through his mind at random, during a day, or it pops up as the first thought in his head as he wakes. _You broke a seal._ Sixty-six seals and he broke one of them. Sixty-five seals then Lilith dies, and he _helped_.

Every time he looks at the Colt he thinks about Bela Talbot, her drive to survive, no matter how many lives she destroyed in the process -- about Aziraphale, his million faces and his last, strangely angular face, immaculately-kept blond hair, and lips apparently made for awkward, desperate kisses -- about the terrible mess Vivienne and Tristane made of his carpeting.

Those four souls are just a handful of those he's sacrificed to remain King of the Crossroads and concubine to Lucifer's favorite hellbitch. He should feel worse about that, but he doesn't.

No. The problem is Lilith. Seeing Lilith is difficult. Seeing Lilith is necessary, to his career (such as it is) and to his sanity. Prophecy says he hasn't got much time left to enjoy her, and the idea is enough to jerk him awake from his sleep, and make every moment she's away and breaking seals intolerable for her absence.

It's down to her, really. Even fate knows that there's no prying her out of his soul. It knows he won't, he couldn't. The rumors haven't stopped flying since Crowley concocted a story about a Colt-wielding Aziraphale murdering the underlings and forcing him to make the deal at gunpoint -- half of Hell suspects he's still a snake in the grass ready to snap at the first opportune moment -- and they're not wrong. But they're not right, he's not a traitor to Hell, either. He's done more for Lucifer himself in the last twenty or so years than in the last two millennia.

That, if nothing else, proves it. He hates Lucifer, and more every day, but if it weren't for _Lilith_ , every spare horrific and lovely inch of her, he wouldn't have done a sodding thing for the Morningstar.

And he has. Breaking a seal is apparently enough proof for the second-best Lucifer fangirl Mariel that he's 100% Hell-friendly. When she comes onto him, he doesn't bother turning her down.[17]

It's spring, bright and cheerful and sunny outside, all flowers and showers as the world ends. The sixtieth seal broke four hours ago, and he's still resting in bed lazily with Mariel, stretched out with his laptop open while she contentedly paints little nonsensical symbols on his headboard with the blood shed in the night's celebration.

Mariel breaks the comfortable silence after ten minutes or so. "You're being boring."

"Someone's clingy," Crowley returns, tempers it with a half-smirk in her direction, and taps the enter key to sign into the website in front of him. Her eyeroll barely registers. He doesn't have much longer to tip the Winchesters off about where he is -- prophecy could afford to be a little more specific on certain aspects of all this -- and the Supernatural fan community is likely his best bet.[18]

Of course, the fans are a bunch of inane idiots. They're humans. It's to be expected. But some of them are smarter than others.

"I miss Viv," Mariel says out of nowhere.[19] "Do you?"

"Sometimes," he admits. "I don't miss that blessed witch, though."

The little co-ed whose body Mariel's borrowing has the perfect face to express the disgust that she feels towards the demon formerly known as Tristane. "He thought he was funny."

"He was definitely not funny," Crowley confirms, and strokes her hair absently, with easy affection. The forum's abuzz about a theory from a delurking commenter about series 3, book 15, _Time Is On My Side_. He clicks, concertedly expressionless, and skims it. "What's the first thing you're going to do when Lucifer rises?"

"I want to make them run," she decides after a moment of thought. "I want to send a hellhound after any humans I can find and watch it tear them into pieces."

He's only half-listening, but he can't help a vague smile at the thought. Once Lucifer springs his cage, it'd really be a mercy for a human to die as a demon's entertainment, considering the alternative. "I haven't introduced you to Bishop, have I?"

That perks Mariel's interest. "Who?"

Crowley opens his mouth to answer her question but abruptly shuts it as there are definitely demons approaching his house. "Up. Clothes," he orders her, tersely, and shuts the laptop.

She looks blank. "What? Why?"

He pulls on his trousers and is halfway through buttoning his shirt before he bothers answering. "If you don't know already, I'm not going to bother telling you."

"Oh -- oh." Now she gets it. Good girl. "I'll go -- "

"Good idea," Crowley concedes, sparing her a glance. She's half-drunk off his blood and fumbling with her dress, and no one can say he's not a gentleman -- he zips it up for her. She rewards him with a kiss, and he pats her cheek before she vanishes.

There's no warning, as always, but he knows. It's Lilith. She's been in a frenzy, a bloodlust, a depression and a mania all in her burning insanity, and he drops anything to see her whenever she'll have him, even if it means he has to see her rend the world piece by piece because he's too cowardly to even attempt to spit in the face of prophecy.

He hopes she hasn't brought a project home tonight.

Crowley rounds the corner and he hears the click of her heels against the floor before he sees her, and the sound of what he thinks has to be the sort of luggage with wheels, until she appears at the end of the hall. She's dark and ancient and gorgeous in a long yellow dress and a meatsuit whose mouth is too suited to that terribly wicked-and-innocent smile of hers, teeth white and perfect and ready to snap. And she's got a stroller.

There's a second where he recognizes what she's pushing along in a pram like a proud mother, but then he accepts it. It's second nature. "Hello, pet."

" _Sixty_ seals, Crowley." It's been so long that he's almost forgotten what her voice can do to him, chill him to his core, fear for his life, get him hard and send him reeling. All he can do is watch her approach. "We have to celebrate."

Her hand grazes his arm and he follows her to the bedroom. It doesn't occur to him to spare a glance into the stroller until she leans over and pulls a wine bottle from inside of it, and that's when he sees the two dead babies curled up inside. It's bizarre how they look like macabre porcelain dolls, a knife and two champagne flutes between them -- now that he thinks about it, it looks more like a demon's fruit basket.

"I had them picked special," Lilith starts, as he sits and puts some distance between himself and the dead babies. "For us. For tonight." She pours the wine -- no, not wine -- into the flute, and unable to resist the draw, drinks.

He doesn't resist when she finally pours him a glass of the blood, but it sits limp in his hand. "Why tonight?" he prompts her.

She's left lipstick marks on the glass as she hungrily goes back for more. The look on her face is always so humbling; no matter how hard he's tried, the ecstasy on her face mid-fuck doesn't even get close to the utter pleasure she wears now, sucking down baby blood. It's hard for her to even find words for a moment. "We're almost there," she says, and swallows, pensive as she tastes the blood again, like a fucking wine connoisseur.

What does she expect him to say? She sits and he can't help but move close, kiss her cheek and nonverbally beg for the slightest bit of attention. "I know," he says against her skin.[20]

"No rest for the wicked," she goes on, her fingers threading their way into his hair.[21] "Two more seals fall tomorrow." She takes the hand that's loosely gripping the cup and draws it to his lips. "I want you to come with me," she murmurs, barely audible.

Baby blood. He absently notes the tag on the stroller where his gaze falls as he simultaneously tries to pretend he's anywhere but here and soak in every second of this. _It could be the last time._ He sips, opens his mouth, and drinks like it's nothing, like every step closer to becoming like her doesn't scare the fucking decency out of him.

"Good," Lilith pronounces, her hand warm and light on his thigh.

"I've got business," he mentions, belatedly; did he agree? He can't remember. She's done her usual spell or _something_ , or he let Mariel have too much of him tonight.

"I know you're not _interested_ in anything but your deals." Her tone isn't exactly withering, but it's close. Crisp, maybe. "Soon they'll all be ours anyway, Crowley. You don't need to work so hard."

Crowley drinks from his flute like it's anything and puts on the act. "Supply and demand," he says, frankly. "They're demanding, so we're supplying. Business is always good in times of trouble, and you, my pet, _you_ have been up to some trouble."

Now she's smiling. "Always," she says, and the s closes on a hiss -- as he starts to smirk, she kisses him, hard. He can taste the blood in the corners of her mouth, the stickiness of her bloody fingers on his face and against his scalp. It's time like this, when he's drunk on power and desperation and snogging the fucking _harbinger of the Apocalypse_ , that he really hates Aziraphale for being 100 percent right about him. He would kiss her in the wake of murder and hand her the flame with which to burn down the world as they've known it since the Fall, and he wouldn't apologize for a blessed second of it.

As she pulls away from him, he thinks, for the first time, really thinks about unloading the Colt in her face.

Her eyes are cold and white as he looks into her face and _fuck_. Prophecy. It comes down to prophecy. He hates prophecy, especially when it knows what he's going to do before he does, or worse, ignores his free will entirely.[22]

She puts a hand to his face, fond and cold and sinuous like she's always been, goading him and backing him further into the corner with every look and word and kiss. "Is something wrong?"

Crowley has to wonder if she knows. It's not out of the realm out of the possibility that she's toying with him in some elaborate game of cat and mouse, that she's known about the Colt all along. "Nothing," he lies sleekly. "Contemplating your proposition. I could use a break from the idiots on the sales floor."

"Please, Crowley. _Pretty_ please." Lilith bounces on the bed and sets her empty glass aside, impatiently wresting his from his hand and tempting him onto the bed beside her. "Let's have some fun for once! There's always _so_ much work to be done."

He can't deny her. Not in the situation she's in, the situation they're in -- no, the situation _he's_ in. It's all about to be ripped away. Lilith is as good as dead, the world that he loves and hates all at once is about to be sunk into a sewer, and he won't have the angel's sanctimonious conduct to put up with until ten years' time. Right now is all he's got.

She guides his hands to her back and he unzips her dress, and once she slides the straps of her dress down her shoulders, he just knows, he fucking knows he won't be the one to pull the trigger. Vivienne was right -- Aziraphale was right, _he_ was right. The Fall never ended. They were always headed towards this, the world just one long downward, self-destructive trajectory towards temptation and blood and All Pit, All the Time.

And it's all down to Lucifer and his fucking ego.

Lilith drips the blood down between her breasts and he gives in. It's not temptation now, it's addiction and fear and love that drives him to treat every second like it's golden and cherished because it is.

 _Days._ It could be days, he thinks, as they watch the sun rise. He doesn't even remember the date until he sees his Blackberry and he knows, it's almost time. Thursday. Thursday is when she breaks the final seal, when Lucifer breaks out, when she's supposed to die.

"Sixty seals," he says aloud.

Lilith sighs and moves closer to take the phone from his hand, easily pitching it across the room (it bounces into a corner). She kisses him on the mouth; it's a different house, different furniture, and different bodies, but they might as well be the same demons in the same scene from 1998, a tableau of temptation. Pride and lust and _you were always my favorite_. "I know you like your pretty little planet," she says briskly, "but Lucifer loves it more than anybody. More than _humanity_. He'll... he'll _cleanse_ it of their filth with fire and blood and then it's _ours_ , not theirs."

"Mm," he says, non-committally.[23]

She doesn't look amused. "We've spent all this time slithering around at their feet, nipping at their heels," she reminds him, her mouth against his ear now, "just to lead them to the time when _we_ take this world and form it in the likeness of our Father's image." He's trying to divert his attention but she forces him back with her hand around his chin. " _This was always meant to die_. The world is only just beginning."

Oh, he understands. "Of course, pet," he agrees, and lets her touch him, admittedly surprised by her sentimentality.[24]

She releases him and leans back on her elbows, and relaxes in this unusual way, really, like a lion dozing in the savannah sun. "Do you know?" she asks after a long moment of comfortable silence.

The misery's settled to the bottom of his stomach. There's no shaking it. "I know lots of things, pet," he says, barely ironic. He doesn't have the energy.

"I asked you a question, Crowley." Her fingernails press against his chin, and he meets her gaze, her white eyes cloudy and sharp with pointed anxiety. " _Do you know_."

She's barely pushing him at all, but he's so close to the edge with her now that he can't resist. "Yes," he forces out. " _Yes_. I know."

There's this flash of something in her eyes, like she's thinking about ripping out his throat as he's seen her do to a least a dozen demons who dared to think they could keep secrets from her. To his relief, it vanishes.

"Say it." The words are brittle as she snaps them out.

" _And it is written that the first demon shall be the last seal_ ," Crowley recites wearily.

Just on the edge of his mind he can feel her _clenching_ around his willpower, and he's losing his grip. "Have you been working against me?" she asks, gently taunting and dangerous, like the soft brush of a snake's coils before its fangs take hold.

"No." Crowley finds words, finds himself, and speaks.[25] " _No_ , never against you."[26]

"I know you, Crowley." Her words are almost as potent as his. "I know you never stop. I may not be your maker but I made you what you are today, and I know you haven't been sitting here fucking around for months. _What do you want_ , who are you working for?"

Easy enough to answer. "The rise of Lucifer and defeat of Michael."

"No!" She forces it out from between her teeth and it doesn't need to be a scream to freeze him where he sits. " _TELL ME THE TRUTH_."

"It's the truth," he retorts and tries to swing his legs off the bed, but he isn't quick enough. She straddles him and pins him down, and even the King of the Crossroads can't fight fucking Lilith in her dark and furious glory.

"Say it, Crowley," she hisses, and once she's got his throat pinned against the down pillow, that's when it hits him, cold and awful -- she could tear him apart, rip him from this body and roast him alive, throw him back into the Pit or kill him on the spot, no mercy, no regard. "Tell -- me -- the -- _truth_!"

It's too much. "I did it for you," he manages.

Her eyes narrow and her head tilts to the side. "Then you want me to be happy," she says, all soft and baby-voiced. "So _don't stop me_. I want to do this, I've always wanted to do this. It's _more_ than worth it."

"Is it?"

He hears it leave his mouth and fear drenches him in that instant. "Yes," Lilith retorts, and it's a snap like the clean break of a bone. She slams her palm against his forehead and he expects an exorcism for the split second before the images scald hot into him, through him --

 _the instant -- streaming tears nearly dry on her face --- when Lucifer, archangel aflame and glorious with a voice that bends her near to breaking, finally snaps the last hope and anchor inside her_

 _And she is free and new and broken and hopeless and full of pride and wrath_

 _His, every inch His._

She's crying when he recovers, the sobs mercilessly cutting through her. It's ugly and painful and resembles dry heaves more than anything else by the time she collapses against him. If this was supposed to change his mind, it hasn't. It's only strengthened his resolve.

"He would let you die to take this world," Crowley snaps off and oh it feels _good_ to be honest and angry for once.[27]

Lilith's hands go to her face as she tries to compose herself. "We were all created for a reason," she says after a long moment. "This is mine."

Patience is a virtue, Aziraphale would say. "You're just a key in a door to Him, pet, _think_ about this."

"I wouldn't expect you to understand."

Her voice's gone soft, pitying, sentimental. He hates her for all the affectation of real emotion, real motive, real personality; she's the worst demon he knows simply because she's malice pure and simple, shameless, flawless destruction pointed at the Heavenly adversary, Lucifer's trigger to pull as prophecy foretold.

"It's _love_ ," Crowley says.[28] "I understand."

"It's _fact_ ," Lilith retorts, and leans forward, shoves his chin back to tilt his head against the pillow. "I'll die? _So what_."

He considers that.[29] "I don't want you to," he answers.

She nods to accept his answer, and releases him, comfortably settling beside him. "At least you admit it's selfish after all," she says finally. "I thought you might try to stand on principle."

"What, me? Never."

"Two of five left to break," she adds, offhand, her hand gentle on his face. "The new boss would like it..."

Crowley exhales, and keeps his face carefully blank.[30] "I'll check my schedule."

Lilith gestures with her hand and pulls the Blackberry through the air, to the bed. "You know," she starts, upon offering it to him, "your obligation ends with me."

"My obligation," he repeats.

"To the Crossroads. Once I'm gone, abdicate -- sleep another century. Or don't, because you're fantastic at it," she says.[31] "But you can walk away."

"I'll keep that in mind," Crowley concedes, and Lilith rolls her eyes, but kisses him on the mouth, fondly.

It's that kiss he remembers when a pillar of light bursts through the skies in Ilchester, Maryland three days later. It might have been wishful thinking to imagine that she'd visited him for more than sex and an assurance of a successor, but that kiss -- it felt like a goodbye.

He might not have loved her, but he had the chance. The Colt still rests in the bedside table, where it rested that night, and he let her leave.

Five more seals, fifteen innocent human lives and the end of the world, but he would have given more than that for one more day. Now he's alone in a motel, Lucifer walks free, and he's more alone than ever.

"Big mistake, mate," Crowley says aloud, lightly, as he types away on the laptop. "Because now I've got nothing _and_ nothing to lose."

He hits send.

* * *

 _November 2009_

Right about the time that Crowley decides that it's unlikely the Winchesters are ever going to show up, the post shows up on morethanbrothers.net.

 _Supernatural con? PLZ READ!_

A convention. If only these morons knew just how useful they were. To be honest, he can't believe how well this whole plan's worked. He's always known that he's just that good, but Becky Rosen, bless her poor mad heart, took the bait hook, line and fucking sinker. It only takes a smidge of effort to set up a number of fronts from which to donate a fistful of dollars to the Supernatural series fan convention.

He's feeling very smug indeed when his Gmail account pops from a blank inbox to _(1)_. It only takes a glance at the screen for his mood to instantly deflate. _Becky Rosen_. He opens it once he feels appropriately steeled for the oncoming storm of stupidity.

 _Hi AJ!_

 _It's always SO great to hear from you; just wanted to say thx for the donation and all the great programming ideas! you are totally right btw, but I can't ban Fritz, it would be **completely** undemocratic and fandom is the most democratic place ever!! (that's ok, we can all have him to point and laugh at LOL! j/k)_

 _Remember if you want to carpool, there's the sticky at the top of the forum!! GO GREEN! lol_

 _E-mail me back okay? And don't forget I would be HAPPY to beta for you any time. We always love more writing (especially PWP)_

 _Love,  
Becky!_

For a second he's left blinking, as though he's rammed his head against a wall or something equally unforgiving, but then he recovers, sighs, and begins to compose an e-mail in response. By the time he's cringed his way through the netspeak and convinces himself to hit send, his drink is warm and someone's ringing his doorbell.

"Humans," he says to himself, and goes to the door. It's probably something pointless, like the post or Neighborhood Watch.[32]

Crowley can vividly remember the last time he opened his door to see the bastard who's standing on his step now: 1987, he'd rigged a whole bucket of holy water to roast him and his mate Ligur before they had a chance to drag him back to Hell due to his massively fucking up the whole Antichrist thing. Obviously, it didn't work out the way he'd planned, which was not Hastur up and walking and showing up at his door.

"Duke Hastur," he greets him, dryly and condescending as he dares. "To what do I owe the pleasure?"

"Please, they only call me that downstairs," Hastur says, and grins. "It's Brady now, Tyson Brady."

"Whatever you say, Saved By The Bell. Fancy a drink?" Crowley offers.

"Nothing sacred," Hastur -- no, Brady -- cracks; apparently he's a smartass now. He saunters into Crowley's house and examines the place. "How domestic. Got a ladyfriend staying here too?"

He eyes Brady distastefully as he tries to pick a bottle of something that wouldn't go to waste on this wanker, but won't insult him. Nothing comes to mind. "I can decorate my own place, thanks," he says, filling a glass with water.

"You always were too fond of this kind of thing. Forget the drink," Brady says, straightens his lapels and pops his collar. He's not wearing a tie. How quaint. "We're going out."

Crowley almost wants to make an excuse, but then he sees the Cadillac in the driveway. It's sleek, pale, fucking gorgeous, and the second that he gets classic car lust in full force, he realizes that it clearly belongs to a Horseman. _Hastur is driving a Horseman's car._ Safe to say he's somewhat obligated to play along. "Works for me," he says with a shrug, and follows him down the walk to the car.

"Let's go," Brady says to the driver, and snaps his fingers. The driver barely looks back at them, but Crowley knows he's a demon as well. Low-ranking. Scum, really. "So, Crowley! I was called in to check in on you. King of the Crossroads. See if there's anything we can give you to make your life easier."

"Hell wants to make my life easier," Crowley repeats, bemused at the very idea.

"Hey, Crowley." Brady gives him a friendly nudge.[33] Crowley sends him a warning look, and he goes on, unabashed. "Our Father owes _so much_ to you. All he wants to do is repay that debt. Any way you want it, that's the way you need it, we get that."

Crowley raises a hand to stop Brady talking. "Journey? Really?" he has to ask.[34]

"I spent two years corralling a Winchester in the right direction," Brady informs him with an eyeroll. "It was hard not to hear the greatest hits in all that time."

Crowley sets a skeptical gaze on Brady. "You. With the Winchesters."

Brady raises a single finger. "One. One Winchester. Our _Sammy_. But keep that under wraps, I'm trying to keep it humble."

"Oh, you worked for _Azazel_ , I wondered what got you so far up the ladder. Did you fuck him?" Crowley asks, casually needling.

"No," Brady retorts neatly, "we don't all need our _cocks_ to make our way out of the Pit. What, no questions about the Winchesters? No gossip? I thought you were the biggest gossipmonger in Hell."

Crowley's eyebrows raise. "You heard wrong."

Brady goes on. "Not that you've been back to Hell in ... what was it, at _least_ a few decades -- "

"Says the demon who's rolling along in a Caddy courtesy of the Horsemen themselves."

That gives Brady pause. "If you're jealous, the boss is always looking for volunteers," he adds.

"No thanks," Crowley says simply. "I'm good."

"You know what?" Brady asks rhetorically, and reaches into the car's mini-fridge to get a pair of beer bottles. Crowley accepts one, fully aware that it's probably dosed with holy water knowing his luck (and karma). "You _are_ good. At your job, I mean. You're a very bad demon, and I don't give that compliment out lightly."

Oh for the love of Hell, he gets it now. It's a performance review. Crowley can't open the beer fast enough. "Cheers," he says dryly, and drinks.

"But," Brady goes on as he opens his own bottle with his precious little Ivy League hands, "there's always the rumors. Nasty little things, aren't they? They never fucking _relent_. It's all we hear downstairs. 'Oh, Crowley's going to turn any day now', 'Oh, Crowley won't be happy until he's King of Hell.' Do you believe that?"

There's really no point in lying, so Crowley cracks a smile and tells the truth. "Yes. They're _demons_. It's what they do."

"We're demons," Brady reminds him, and kicks back to drink.

Crowley swirls his free hand in the air to indicate the situation. "And look at us, clucking away like the hens we are."

"Point made. Look, we're here. Thanks, man," Brady says to the driver, and opens the door. "Come on, Crowley. We've got a reward for you."

The neon sign on the building says _Lace_ , and the look on his face must be crystalline for once in his very long life, because Brady laughs the moment he sees it. "That's right." He pushes a roll of singles into Crowley's loose hand, and grins. "It's time to party."

The girls are all tits and ass and hairspray, and this is what Crowley both loves and hates about humanity. It's all about animal urges, whether they like to admit it or not, and they're more than willing to hurt and maim and exploit their fellow man or woman just to get that thrill they're looking for. It's a cheap and awful instinct, magpie and natural, but at the same time so incredibly human, because for every exploitative and nasty action, a human can turn around and play the B-side, compassion and love and insight.

Crowley doesn't have time to order a drink before Brady orders a round and a lapdance for him. The girl can't be older than 21, could be underage for all he knows, but her tits say woman and her hips say mother. He watches her hungrily as she dances, but once she's in his lap, it's fucking nothing. It's the same old motions that every woman thinks she created, but only one woman did.

 _Her._

By their third round, Brady is laughing at some line the stripper's shot back at him and Crowley can't shake the feeling like his teeth are on edge, like he can taste the absence of everything _right_ about his life in this moment on the tip of his tongue. It's not that he wants something. It's that he doesn't have what he needs.

Obviously Crowley's sampling the vast array of women and demons at his beck and call. A demon as powerful as Crowley, he's got the vast array of people beneath him to choose from, men, women and demons who all want power as much as he wants an escape from the fucking trap he's in. It isn't that he hasn't tried to escape into sex and alcohol and revenge.

It's that it hasn't worked yet.

"Lilith," he says to Brady. The best lies are part-true, so he lets himself talk. "Fucking Lilith."

Brady is watching a brunette whose legs are wrapped fetchingly around the pole. "What about her?"

Crowley's watching her now, his glass halfway to his mouth as the stripper's hips move. _You were my favorite._ "He can bring her back. Can't he?"

Brady's gaze instantly leaves the girl as he stares, unbelieving, at Crowley. " _That's_ what you want? You want that scary bitch back and walking this shithole? We're all better off, you know that."

Crowley can't let that pass. "Let me get this straight, Death's stable-boy thinks that _Lilith_ is scary?"

Oh, Brady isn't happy. He hit a nerve. "Who told you that I was -- "

"No one," Crowley interrupts. "But using the company car, _really_? It's transparent. So to speak," he allows, and goes on. "A pale horse. I know cars -- ah, _Brady_. And I know the ins and outs of the Apocalypse better than you can imagine."

"About that," Brady says, a snap to his tone now. "Lucifer sent me with a message."

Crowley tries very hard not to laugh, but it starts to crack his facade until he's grinning widely and warmly condescending. "Lucifer... sent _you_?" he confirms.

"Yes," Brady says, defensive. "And watch your tongue, boy -- "

" _Boy_?" Crowley cuts him off. "I've been tempting since before you were teething, and don't forget it."

"I know that not twenty years ago you were a traitor to your own kind," Brady hisses, and Crowley's smile only grows at his irritation. Things haven't changed at all.

"Hey baby," a brunette in a g-string and pasties greets Crowley, and he returns a "Hello, darling" along with a big wad of cash.

"Mate, you need to lighten up," he says to Brady, who is distastefully eyeing Crowley like he's slithered too close to his ankles. "Now what's the man downstairs have to say to little old me?"

Brady finally relaxes once Crowley's indicated that the bartender is watching them, and crisply says, " _Keep out of it_."

"Is that the advice -- sorry, _message_ , or just a tidbit from you?" Crowley checks.

"That's the message," Brady confirms tersely, and waves a waitress over. "Now shut the fuck up for the rest of the night, Crowley, I'm _trying_ to have fun."

Crowley shrugs, self-satisfied as ever, and pulls out his Blackberry to check his e-mail. _The date is set in stone, you guys -- November 20!! HOW AWESOME IS THIS? Love, Becky Rosen!_

He doesn't resist the smile that comes to his face. Brady, Hastur, whatever he calls himself and whoever he's working for, he's not remotely smart enough to put it all together. Even Lucifer is too fucking ego-driven to suspect someone might play a long game against his angelic ass.

It's surprise enough when the lights flicker out in his house three weeks later, but he's ready.

"Go," he says to Mariel, and can't keep the smile from his face as he lifts his drink to his mouth.

 _Everybody plays the fool, some time  
There's no exception to the rule, listen, baby  
It may be factual, it may be cruel, but I ain't lying  
Everybody plays the fool_

* * *

 _Spring 2010_

The first thing Crowley does after handing the Colt off to the Winchesters -- besides hope that they won't blow their brains out by accident or in a fit of pique -- is break Aziraphale's contract. He's already made the majority of his preparations, and in an economy like this, the Pacific Northwest is full of little cabins that are more than abandoned. It's time for all that planning to go into action.

He fires off one single message from his Blackberry before he destroys it, a private message the conspicuously bookish theory-happy account on morethanbrothers.net named _Rafell_.

 _Run. Now._

 _-C_

Crowley isn't the sort of person who does much hoping, what he does is avoid and ignore and wait for things to go away, but there should be some sort of sign that Lucifer's been blown away. Two days away slumming in a house with water tinted brown from rusty pipes and leaves scattered across the floor is not remotely Hell, but he was never one to savor anticipation.

Anticipation is for optimists.

It occurs to him as Thursday morning arrives, sunlight graciously toeing the edge of his door, that in handing off the gun he has in fact finally made a decision. The sabotage is out of its planning stages, and now the future of the earth as they know it is in the Winchesters' hands.

He drops his head back against the thin mattress and grimaces at the paint peeling off the ceiling. On one hand, if you want something done well, do it yourself. On the other, better them than him.

Night falls. There's no sign of anything. The silence is much worse than whatever implosion or explosion he expected, and it hangs over his head like the fucking sword of Damocles until he finally just digs out his book of magic.

It's a balancing act is what it is, keeping enough protection on the house to keep Heaven and Hell from crashing through his door, but enough of a crack to allow the performance of any sort of magic.

"This is depressing," Crowley says to himself, and rolls his eyes as he ties off the hexbag and sets up the altar. "Should have kept the gun, 'least I can shoot straight -- " He lights the candles with a snap of his fingers and tosses a match onto the plate.

He was never very good at Enochian and it's a shot in the dark, but if he's lucky --

"You really didn't think this through, did you?" a crisp and apparently English voice says, and then Crowley sees him, skeletal thin and bemused as he looks back at Crowley. "This had better be good."

"Yes, hello," Crowley answers before the terror really sets in and _that is Death_ , standing right there. "I take it Lucifer came calling last night?"

Death rolls his eyes. "Yes, he did. Is that all? Your Lord and Master does have so many plans for me, I had best get to work."

His eyebrows raise at that. " _My_ Lord and Master," he echoes.

"Yes," Death says simply, and appraises him with his head tilted back just so. "Your days are numbered, Crowley."

"Well, you'd know," Crowley says, pithy as he dares in the literal face of Death. "Any way I can convince you out of killing me?"

"I said _days_ , didn't I? I'll be leaving now -- Lucifer's to-do list calls." Crowley's eyes are watering with the effort of seeing the illusion of an anthropomorphic personification that his meatsuit's eyes can comprehend as opposed to the real Death, all darkness and shadows and the scythe at his side. It's a battle he's losing. "GOODBYE," Death's real voice rings out like funeral bells.

"Wait," Crowley blurts out.

Death is staring at him, plainly unamused. If he could, Crowley would honestly slap himself, but he's got something to say. "You could stop this."

"No. I can't," Death says, weary and impatient like a parent talking to a child, and vanishes.

Once he's alone, it starts to sink in that the Winchesters failed, Lucifer's still merrily strolling through God's Creation and Death, Destroyer of Worlds, has a to-do list from that pretty-winged fucker. " _Fucking blessed bloody hell_ ," he curses without a care for sense or anything like that, and flicks the candles out with a wave of his hand.

Just as quickly, Crowley vanishes to the crossroads just north of his house -- the other house, the house he'd lived in for months on end -- but the house isn't there. There's just a shell of a house, a fucking husk left from when Hell thought it would be hilarious to put the place up in flames.[35]

"You _bastards_ ," he says to the universe in general, seething and enjoying every second of it because this is just it, this is just the reminder he needed. This is what he'll throw back in their faces once he's won.

There's crime scene tape over the door, but no one is there -- no demons, no humans, nobody. It's just him walking down that same corridor the Winchesters tread before they took the gun that prophecy kept him around to deliver, the light from the pool dim and red as it reflects against the windows.

Red.

He goes to the now broken glass doors and opens them, distastefully stepping over the shards of glass that provided some demon with a few seconds' amusement. It's only a few more strides before Crowley can see what's in the pool.

At first he can't tell exactly what it is -- animal or human -- but then the bloated thing floats slightly in the breeze and he can see the face on it, or what remains of the face. Even though it looks like an overenthusiastic hellbitch took a bite out of him with human teeth, it's obviously Belling.

"Really now," he says, low and irritated.[36]

It just sort of makes sense when he hears low rumbling of a hellhound slowly waking up, and he rolls his eyes as he turns to see the hulking thing five feet tall and deliciously fucking evil.

Then he realizes, and he smiles. "Hello, darling."

The hound runs to him and nearly bowls him over; if it weren't for a wise sidestep on Crowley’s part he'd have wound up in the pool with Belling. "Look at how you've grown! Which one are you now..."

The hound sharply barks and nudges Crowley's side, and Crowley is smart enough to check the tags. "There you are, Bishop. Coming with Master, are we?"

One more enthusiastic bark gets him laughing, and he hauls Bishop back before he tries to turn Belling into a chew toy. A far-off howl gets him back to hiding, and he sends off into the nearby forest Bishop to happily roam, while he regroups.

It only takes a handful of months of eavesdropping for him to get the gist of it, and he's filled three composition notebooks full of ideas like some sort of madman[37] out of cabin fever or misguided helpfulness or really just for something to do, when there's a knock on his door.

It doesn't make the slightest bit of sense, and that's what's dangerous about it. No one should be able to find him, and that's why it really shouldn't surprise him who's there.

"Hi," Jesse Turner -- the Antichrist -- supplies, looking up at him like he's going to offer Girl Scout cookies or Boy Scout popcorn or whatever it is the children are selling these days. Then he brandishes Death's sickle. "This is for you."

"For me," Crowley repeats. The Antichrist is giving him Death's sickle?

"Not for you. You can't use it. _Ever_. It's for the Winchesters," Jesse clarifies. "But not now. Later. I think." His eyebrows furrow. "You'll know when they need it, but for now you need to hide it. But because you're hiding, we thought it could hide with you."

Crowley mouths hopelessly, lost for words for once in his long, long existence, then says, "This is Death's?"

Jesse frowns at Crowley. "I took it from him. You're missing the _point_. I know you're a demon, but you're doing good. And if you keep doing good, then maybe you can have your friend back. Okay?"

Crowley just manages to get past the idea of _taking_ something from Death when he realizes what he's just heard. "You have Aziraphale?" he dares ask.

"You can't _have_ people," Jesse says reasonably. "I know where he is and I know he's your friend and I can make him better again. But I'm not gonna do it unless you help us. All right, Mister Crowley?"

That's a better deal than he's ever made, probably. "All right," he agrees, and shakes the Antichrist's free hand. Jesse thrusts the sickle into Crowley's free hand and says a polite "Thank you" before he vanishes from the step.

Crowley is left staring out at the horrible view from his stoop, and shuts the door, holding the sickle aloft as though it's radioactive. He buries it as deep as he can, walls it up in the basement, and rests against it once the job is done.

"It's all going according to plan," he murmurs to himself, and laughs, though it isn’t even remotely funny.

Whose plan is it when it comes down to it, he has to wonder?

 _... rings_ , he hears from the coin in his pocket, and pulls it out to listen more closely. Crowley examines the tarnish on the coin as he thinks of the dull flash of candlelight off of the ring on Death's hand, and flicks it in the air as he smiles like a snake.

"Tails," he hisses once he sees the coin in his palm, and laughs aloud, more satisfied than he could explain at even the slightest glance at the cosmic chess board. _He gets it._ "I win."


	4. Epilogue

_May 2010_

Crowley gets his last delivery finished and flees Chicago like his life depends on it.[1] Lucky bastard that he is, he gets three whole days on the run[2] before something happens.

Over that time he's never anticipated that the "something" would be a moment so undignified as vanishing from the abandoned house in which he's squatting midway through sitting on the couch, but that's what it is, and he deals with it by scrambling to his feet with a glare.

It's then he realizes the roar he's hearing is dance music from the speaker ten feet away, and, as his glare lands on a waitress wearing just about nothing, he knows where he is. He's in a strip club.

"Just one more for me, scotch on the rocks, thanks," he says to the bewildered waitress, as though he's been here for hours and she'd be insane to think otherwise. _What the blessed Host is going on?_

Out of nowhere a tall, blonde Englishman appears. "This way, Crowley," he says, taking him by the shoulder with a friendly grip. "Relax," he advises next, and guides him towards a table for a party of five. "I'm not a demon or an angel or anything that wants you dead."

"Oh, well, I'll take your word for it," Crowley says blandly, prepared to wind up dying in a strip club of all places, but stops cold when he sees a waitress is moving another chair to the table for a seat next to Aziraphale.

"Hello," Aziraphale says jovially, as though it makes sense for him to be happily seated in a strip club and _oh no_ Crowley's starting to recognize the other faces at the table. "Come, sit."

 _This is a trick_ is all Crowley can think, but finally he comes up with something to say. " _What is going on_ ," he hisses, and yanks the chair out to sit in a bit of a sulk.

"We'll explain," his tour guide interjects, and waves like some sort of idiot, and then Crowley just stares at him, _realizing_.

"You," he says, speechless otherwise.

"Me," Adam Young says, and grins with a mouthful of perfect white teeth. "You remember my friends, right?"

He's in a strip club with the Antichrist. _And Aziraphale._[3]

Crowley glances to the former angel, still completely boggled. "And you – "

"Quite well, thank you for asking," Aziraphale answers, cheerful as anything. "You might want to answer Adam's question." He raises his eyebrows at Crowley.

"Um," Crowley starts, trying to recall the question, then said, "oh right, the friends." _The girl, the geek and the idiot,_ he thinks, but thankfully edits himself before he speaks. "War, Famine, and Pestilence."

"I'm not War," the woman who'd once been the girl with the twigs and twine fires at him once she has the opportunity. "It's Pepper."

"Wensleydale," the bespectacled man in the nice, if ill-fitting suit[4] introduces himself, and the idiot[5] waves and says, "Brian."

Crowley stares at them. "And?" he prompts. "Forgive me if I'm not too keen on a reunion, but I've never been the sort to ask for trouble."

"You're right, he has changed," Wensleydale says in an undertone to Aziraphale.

"Oh, please," Aziraphale scoffs at Crowley, not without affection. "Since when?"

"I don't go out and find it, it... chases me down," Crowley points out, losing steam as he talks. "I, ah. Fine."

Adam hands some money off to the stripper who comes to dance by them, absently, bigger concerns on his mind apparently. "I brought you here so we could talk openly," he tells Crowley.

"You brought me to a strip club to talk," Crowley repeats. [6]

"It's not for the atmosphere," Pepper says wearily, her expression speaking volumes about how little she wants to be sitting on a sticky chair at a girlie bar. "We did it for Aziraphale."

"It's the last place they'd look for him," Adam says, with that supreme self-confidence that must mean the whole thing was his idea. [7] "And they can't find him. We need him. The Prophet says so."

Crowley shakes his head. "No, no, no, the Prophet's finished," he hurries to correct them, "whatever you're hearing, it's wrong. The Apocalypse was averted."

"That's the first time I've ever heard optimism from you... ever," Aziraphale feels the need to mention. "You think that Heaven will give up that easily? That they won't do anything to free Michael and Lucifer and make way to Paradise?"

"This is the only crowd I'd ever have to explain this to but there's a difference between wanting something and being capable of achieving it," Crowley explains with painstaking condescension.

Aziraphale is unmoved, still focused. "Well, we're not giving up as easily as you are."

"We," Crowley echoes. "You and these humans?" [8]

"There's only one way they could open that cage, and the five of you are the only ones _capable_ of stopping them," Aziraphale says directly, just as the speakers begin to blare out AC/DC's _Hot Blooded_ , like this isn't totally insane.

"Just so you know, you've completely lost it," Crowley informs him.

Aziraphale shrugs humbly. "I learned from the master."

Now he's just annoyed on principle. "I have never been THIS obsessed, all right? Fine, say that hypothetically I'm listening – "

"No, you're listening," Pepper says, patiently menacing in that way only women can manage. "Starting now. And not talking."

"The spunky girl act was great back in the '80s but you're getting a bit old for it now, love," Crowley retorts, and that's just about when his throat closes completely and Adam Young is just smirking. _Oh._

"That's right," Adam says casually. "Sit back and listen now."

Aziraphale goes on once Adam nods to him. "Heaven wants to tear everything down and build it back up again. Hell will want Lucifer freed. So they'll be after souls. Souls they can use to feed the Horsemen and bring them back to power."

Crowley opens his mouth and then recalls that he can't talk and gives Aziraphale a look that says everything for him.

"We want you to run Hell," Adam says simply. "So. Yes or no?"

 _This is blackmail,_ he wants to say in outrage, but the whole point is that the Antichrist can make him do whatever he wants – and that's when he remembers that _fucking Heaven above_ there are _two of them_ out there. That explains Jesse Turner's use of "we."

Not important. He nods.

"Congratulations," Aziraphale says, and offers a broad smile in something akin to pride. "You're going to be the King of Hell."

* * *

 _June 2010_

Crowley has been the King of Hell for the longest two weeks of his life. The upside of being King is the power from the neverending supply of souls[9], while the downside is the usual "everyone wants him dead" thing. Really, it balances out, but assassination attempts get old after a while.

The funny thing about downstairs is that the whole thing kept working for about a day and a half in Hell's time even after the cage shut on Lucifer's stupid face. No one can beat Hell for the comfort of routine and predictability, except maybe Heaven.

He's taking a quick nap when he's all of the sudden summoned, and he sighs when he recognizes the tidy little room that Aziraphale calls his own in the house Adam Young shares with the other three brats. "You know how emasculating this is?" he asks rhetorically.

"No," Aziraphale answers despite the nature of the question, and takes a seat in the nearby computer chair. "We need to talk."

"No we don't, everything's going well, I'm going back," Crowley rambles off and heads for the door; then he feels the devil's trap close around him once his hand is on the doorknob. "You bastard."

The former angel smiles grimly. "Let's talk," he says then, and reaches for a stack of paper sitting on his desk, then offers it to Crowley. "Check the marked page."

Crowley opens the document to the sticky-noted page and starts to read. "Oh no, it's Carver Edlund again," he notes the style with distaste, but keeps reading before Aziraphale snaps at him or something.

 _"Castiel," Rachel said gently, and drew the other angel's hand away from his sword. "He's gone."_

 _"I refuse to believe it," Castiel ground out, his heart in his throat as he did his best not to face the truth. "Balthasar is a great soldier – "_

 _She fell silent, and he brooded, staring out with a thousand yard stare into the sky of his favorite Heaven. "He was bested," Rachel said finally, "and Raphael seized the armory, Castiel. We must pay our respects and return to the war."_

Crowley tosses the manuscript back on Aziraphale's desk. "Your point?"

"Heaven's at war," Aziraphale says in prompt answer. "And Raphael is going to win... and then you'll have to contend with him in defending the cage."

"Oh no," Crowley says before he can stop himself.

"That's right. _Raphael._ You're doomed."

"I'm not doomed," he tries, but it's too big a lie even for him. "Oh, fine," he concedes gloomily, "I'm doomed, you seem to have an idea, I'm listening."

"If Raphael has Heaven's armory, it's just a matter of time before he wins the war." The angel thumbs the manuscript. "The best thing you can do is arm yourself, and you'll need souls for that."

Crowley raises his eyebrows. "Angel. I'm King of Hell, you know. I have my share."

"Not enough," Aziraphale says bluntly.

"No," he admits without missing a beat. "But you aren't going to say 'deals,' are you? If you say deals I may just faint."

He gets a stony look for that. "No. You both need souls in order to stand a chance in this war – "

Crowley stares at Aziraphale. "Both? You can't possibly be suggesting – "

"Yes," Aziraphale says. "You and Castiel."

"I don't like the new you," Crowley decides at that instant.

Aziraphale shrugs. "That's because it wounds your pride that I have plans and you don't."

"Stop it with the honesty and – do you really want _him_ running Heaven? _Castiel_?" he demands.

"He won't end the world and that's all I really care about," Aziraphale says.

"Where are we supposed to get – " No, he recognizes that look on Aziraphale's face. "You wouldn't."

"I would," Aziraphale says blandly, "if I could."

"Have I mentioned turning human has made you fucking insane in the last ten minutes?"

"Purgatory." The angel lifts the carpet square and breaks the devil's trap. "Once you find a way in, you divvy the souls up, you put things right, and we can worry about damage control later."

"Listen to you," Crowley says, vaguely impressed, and steps back onto the regular carpeting.

"Yes. You've been a terrible influence." Aziraphale stops him moving to the bed and assures him, "but I don't mind."

After all the fear, paranoia and everything else that comes with running Hell, he's forgotten what contentment feels like – what it means to want something and to get it and the simple enjoyment of it all. It's too human to be comforting, disturbing on a whole new level, but Aziraphale gets close, stays close, and Crowley shuts up his cozy body language before this turns into Nicholas Sparks on him with a kiss.

He's struck for an instant about how much he's craved this, craved him, craved _something,_ someone, instead of just plans and power and pride. Luckily, he throws it off once Aziraphale's teeth seize onto his lower lip, and surrenders to sensation.

Everything is backwards, Aziraphale aggressive, snarky and full of guile, Crowley the chess piece on the board to be manipulated, but somehow this is what they were all heading toward.

He can only imagine what the Prophet will have to say about them. Hopefully nothing at all.

* * *

 _December 2010_

As though it wasn't bad enough being King of Hell crouching in hiding from a couple of prettyboy humans after faking his death because Castiel fucked things up again, Crowley has to deal with ANGELS.

Plural. Multiple obnoxious self-righteous soldiers of Heaven. The Arrangements worked because there was only one angel and one demon involved, but now their motley crew of humans and Antichrists includes _a second angel._

Crowley doesn't like him. At all.

"I like the teleport bit," Balthazar[10] is blabbing on to whoever's listening now that Adam's snatched him from wherever, "but next time a little warning, I was in the middle of a very interesting orgy with an acrobat and a few yoga instructors."

"Little ears," Aziraphale says severely.

"What's an orgy?" Jesse asks with interest.

"Something grown-ups do," Adam says, instantly dismissive, and snaps his fingers to ignite the holy fire around the angel. "We know what you have."

Crowley can't let that pass. "A sex addiction that would make the Marquis de Sade blush?"

"Oh no, Aziraphale, we're making your boyfriend jealous," Balthazar cracks without missing a beat. "I'm sure you understand that at his age, he just can't – "

"I'm King of Hell, you know," Crowley mentions acidly.

"You have the weapons," Jesse cuts in, to the point. "We want them."

Balthazar starts to open his mouth with an expression that has _absolutely not, await my clever retort_ written all over it, but then it seems to dawn on him where he is, who he's with, and that this really isn't a request. "They're hardly mine to give," he answers instead.

"No," Aziraphale says, and at a glance Crowley can see a smile that more closely resembles the humble, unbroken angel he'd known for millennia than anything he's seen cross that face in months. "They're mine."

Crowley takes entirely too much pleasure from the way the angel defers to Aziraphale then, but then he adds, "You want your sword back you'll need some grace to go with it."

"I appreciate your concern, but I've sorted it, thank you," he returns politely enough, and sends a furtive look to Adam, who's unmoved. "Lead the way."

"Woah," Chuck Shurley says from the doorway, his astonished look lit by the holy fire. "Balthazar. Hi."

"Do I know – oh," Balthazar says, and starts to laugh. "You – you're working for a _prophet_?"

"No one's working for anyone," Adam says firmly. "We're working together."

"Says the Antichrist Mark I," Balthazar fires back.

"Stop talking," Crowley says as directly as demonly possible. "The Antichrist said jump, you say how high, we're trying to clean up the mess that the Winchesters and their angelic buttboy started, so _play along_ or by Heaven above I'll tear you to shreds, don't think I won't."

"He's right," Aziraphale admits, and Crowley smirks.[11]

"To the Batmobile then," Balthazar says flippantly, and blows Crowley a kiss.

When he takes a step forward to do something about it, Adam freezes him in place. "No," he says, like he's chiding his hellhound. "Chuck – have another story for us?"

"Uh… yeah," Chuck concedes, and looks at Balthazar. "I thought you'd be taller."

"I thought you'd be a better writer."

"Balthazar," Aziraphale sighs. "Don't aggravate the prophet."

"Well. He's right," Chuck has to admit.

Balthazar sobers. "Castiel needs all the help he can get, and he's not asking for any. What's the plan?"

"Nothing we can tell you," Aziraphale says with a note of apology in his voice. "But I'll keep the weapons safe. For Castiel, when he's in need."

"Great. Fine. What are you doing here?" Balthazar asks Crowley without a bit of humility. "Did loverboy here flutter his eyelashes at you and say 'you're my only hope'?"

"Shut up," Jesse says, and Balthazar's mouth closes instantly, against his will – then, so does Crowley's. _Bugger._ "And go."

Crowley has the presence of mind to throw his hands in front of his face as a blinding flash of grace overwhelms Aziraphale's vessel, and then both of the angels are gone.

It takes a lot of effort not to be visibly happy for the once-again angel. Pride and desire are supposed to be bad, hellish traits, not good ones that go with objectively positive things. But this complicates things again, Heaven and Hell; well. Things will never stop being complicated.

Adam immediately turns to Jesse. "You can't be so impatient. Not with these powers, that's the road to... bad things."

"I'm tired," Jesse says, and looks to Crowley. "It's not fun anymore."

"Kid's got a point, it's getting old," Crowley feels obligated to agree once his tongue is loosed. "Can't you two break into Purgatory somehow?"

"That's not how stories go," Jesse answers before Adam can say a word. "What's the point of reading a story if someone can just make all the problems go away?"

"Deus ex machina," Adam says knowingly, and nods to Chuck.

"It's cheap," Chuck agrees.

"You just made Aziraphale an angel again and that's not cheap?" Crowley asks rhetorically.

Chuck shrugs. "Status quo is God."

"Besides, he's not the hero," Jesse interjects helpfully. "He's a helper. This is Castiel's story. And yours."

Crowley can't argue with that. He's the only one of their lot who's made it into the prophecies in any official manner. "Well then, I should check on my Heavenly business partner, shouldn't I." He flees before anyone can stop him.

There's nothing scarier than being a main character. That's when the problems start.

* * *

 _April 2011_

"How many times am I going to have to clean up your messes?"

It's both encouraging and discouraging at once that Castiel doesn't seem to know what he's doing at all. He almost finds it endearing, except when his mistakes start to pile up into a big mess of fuckery that only Crowley can fix.

"You'll never understand," Castiel says, and his wings flinch with irritation at the edge of Crowley's vessel's vision. "It's a demon's job to sow destruction and chaos, an angel... is meant to glorify God's creation."

Crowley lounges back on the jukebox, and swipes a bit of blood from the counter to thoughtfully taste it.[12] "You're keeping the Apocalypse from ending God's creation."

"Am I," Castiel says, flatly rhetorical, and Crowley almost pities him for a moment before he regains his senses.

"I said as much, didn't I?"

Castiel stretches his wings out and paces. "You are, after all, known for your trustworthiness."

"You angels have gotten so snarky," Crowley comments.

"And you would know Heaven's sarcasm level how exactly?"

Oh, he let that one slip far too easily. "Just a guess. War makes the best of us into monsters."

The angel sends him a poisonous look. "Thank you for your input," he says stiffly, [13] then goes on in a firm tone, "but I think that's enough."

He likes that; it's enough to make him laugh and imitate the crack of a whip. "Oh, the nipple clamps next," he requests.

"I don't understand what you're saying," Castiel answers directly, not sounding very pleased about it anyway.

"Look at you, so much to learn." Crowley drinks. "If only you weren't doomed to this whole God thing, I'd fuck you senseless. Twice." Castiel says nothing to that, so he goes on. "A night."

Castiel is stern through his embarrassment and awkwardness, and that's just adorable. "That's enough."

Crowley smirks. "Really? Because I could manage some more."

"What we have here is a business arrangement," Castiel says, snappish now, "nothing more."

"Right. _This_ is the property of the Winchesters," Crowley says slowly with a gesture to Castiel's rather pretty vessel, aggravating as he can manage. "Can't be unfaithful. I'm sure that Dean isn't sleeping his way through the fifty states, after all – "

Castiel tenses as Crowley speaks and finally cuts him off. "It isn't like that."

"Keep telling yourself that," Crowley advises him. "Denial is 99.9% effective and makes feelings and lust go far, far away. It has so far, hasn't it?"

"If you haven't got anything more to say about the war I'm leaving," Castiel says in a tone that could make milk curdle.

Crowley just grins. "You're fighting for the right to do what you want," he points out to the angel. "If what you want is to screw someone, that's a _motivation_ , not a shame."

Castiel looks and sounds weary as Crowley does now. "Says the King of Hell."

That raises some questions. Crowley lights up a fag and glances up at Castiel as casual as anything. "You have no idea who I am, do you?"

The answer is drier than is really necessary. "Fergus McLeod."

Crowley snorts in disbelief. "You fell for that?"

As usual, the angel's slow on the uptake. "I... have not fallen."

"Burning the bones works," Crowley says simply. "But I was never a human. Not really."

"I don't understand," Castiel confesses, albeit reluctantly.

He sighs, and explains with blatant condescension, "You were trapped in your vessel. So was I."

"And you died of old age."

"I made a deal to get back into Hell," he admits grudgingly. "I'm much older than you think I am, kitten."

"I am not your kitten," Castiel answers flatly.

Crowley scoffs. "You're whatever I want you to be and you know it."

Castiel gives him the coldest, least amused look he can manage and vanishes without another word, and Crowley just shrugs it off.

"You can come out now," he announces to the diner in general, and after a pause, Jesse sidles out from back in the kitchen.

"You can't find me, that's not how it works," he says grumpily.

"You were trying too hard to hide, mate." Crowley blows out a smooth stream of smoke and ashes out his fag. "So. Conclusion?"

Jesse looks blank. "What?"

"The Winchesters just killed the Mother of All Monsters; what are they going to do next?" he cracks.

"Things are going wrong," Jesse says, and screws up his face in an apparent effort to remember something. "But I can't talk to you now. You're still in play."

"But – " The kid's gone. Everyone's vanishing on him today. "We're not actually chess pieces," he shouts after Jesse, and heads to the crossroads nearest Aziraphale's book "shop." He needs a place to hide.

All Hell breaking loose would be a mercy, Crowley has to think, compared to Purgatory. Better the underworld you know. He's heard rumors about the sort of things that live in Purgatory, and none of them would find even an archangel-powered Castiel too tough a chew toy to gnaw on.

They're doomed.

* * *

 _June 2011_

There are things worse than demons, or Lucifer, or even the Mother of all Monsters. Things that God locked into Purgatory and threw away the key before he ever created Hell; things that go beyond "monster" right into "scary beyond the comprehension of anything sentient."

Leviathans. He remembers when they roamed the earth and had their pick of beast or bird outside the Garden itself, and the angel who played gatekeeper against them with his sword aflame.

It's enough to make a demon go mad, or possibly on a very long holiday somewhere wherever those scary bastards _aren't_.

At least, aren't yet.

Aziraphale is testing his flaming sword[14], its grip, its balance, when Crowley drops in on him. "Careful, you could kill someone with that thing," he tells the angel.

He watches Aziraphale twist the sword with his wrist and swing, his eyebrows raised in spite of himself. It's a good look on him. "That's the intent," Aziraphale says, breezily oblivious as always.

Crowley stares at Aziraphale, uncomprehending. "No, no no, we're waiting this one out."

"I'm hardly going to allow Leviathans to overrun the planet when I have this." Aziraphale levels the sword at Crowley and gives a demure shrug as he lowers and sheathes it. "I fought too hard for this Creation to allow it to fall to something as low as these... these bottom-feeders," he finishes distastefully.

"And here I thought you'd quit the berseker routine once you were all graced-up," Crowley says blithely.

There's a split second where Aziraphale seems to be smiling despite himself, but then Chuck Shurley appears with a wad of folded paper in his hand. "Uh," he says, glances down at his bare chest and boxers, and looks nowhere near embarrassed enough considering the situation. "Hey!"

Aziraphale gestures without much thought to Chuck and a tartan robe materializes around the prophet's half-naked body. [15] "Which one this time?" he asks casually.

"My money's on Adam," Crowley says offhand.

"Neither, sorry," Chuck says, quickly tightening the robe around his waist. "No idea how I got here, guys, but I have something important to tell you."

Crowley leans over to Aziraphale to crack quietly, "This should be good."

"You were more fun to write when I thought you were fictional," Chuck informs him, with some deference despite the sentiment.

"I get that a lot," Crowley answers.

Aziraphale ignores him. "What is it?"

Chuck's scruffy face breaks out into a grin, and Crowley's stomach drops metaphorically to his feet at that, because the human sense of humor has always been a source of horror for him on a daily basis. "You have work to do," he says, and offers the paper to Aziraphale.

Crowley is willing to allow Aziraphale the pleasure of reading, especially considering it's Chuck fucking Shurley's first draft and he enjoys having a working brain, but he has to ask after a second, "What, what is it?"

Aziraphale's face shines with hope and understanding, and that's a good sign for everybody but Crowley and his vacation plans. "Witches," he says simply, and smiles. "We need witches."


End file.
